Mrs Newman’s features

Orpheus, it is well known, re­nounced all women after the death of his pre­cious Eu­ryd­ice; I shall not love again, for I shall never find an­other woman as per­fect as Mrs Cyn­thia Newman.

Last sum­mer, seek­ing a ha­ven from the hell­ish heat of ur­ban life, which seemed to have va­por­ized my Hip­po­crene, I took a room in a splen­did villa in the cool coun­try­side. I as­pired to find my muse amidst the beau­ti­ful ru­ral land­scape.

At first glance, Mr & Mrs Joe New­man formed the odd­est pair­ing of two souls I had en­coun­tered: she, a lively, col­or­ful par­rot; he, the mere shadow of a stuffed jack­daw. But, hav­ing lived in their com­pany for sev­eral weeks, I can now say with con­fi­dence that a more har­mo­ni­ous un­ion can­not be imagined.

The lady, 20 years or so my sen­ior, was un­ques­tion­a­bly al­lur­ing, and her turn­out, as I later came to ap­pre­ci­ate, did not pro­fane to veil her di­vine shape­li­ness any less dec­o­rously than the wine mer­chant’s crys­tal gob­let does his fin­est vintage.

The gent­le­man, 20 years or so her sen­ior, was per­haps the most agree­a­ble per­son I’ve met. His gray hair, his wrin­kled face, his drab eyes, and his gen­eral de­meanor be­trayed his age, but he wore them all with grace, and his honed lo­cu­tion more than made up for his hor­ri­so­nant voice.

Neither he nor the mis­sus ever men­tioned any child, whose va­cated room I had pre­sumed I was to oc­cupy, and I thought it im­po­lite to in­quire about such a pri­vate mat­ter. I did, how­ever, ask them why they had de­cided to let the room out.

“Oh, you know,” she said, “life is dread­fully costly these days, isn’t it, love?”

“Quite so!” he ex­claimed. “Quite so!”

The rent was nev­er­the­less rea­son­a­ble, and cov­ered lunch, din­ner, and break­fast, which lat­ter she brought to my bed in a taste­fully ar­ranged tray at seven-thirty, still in lin­ge­rie, and came back to pick up at eight, changed into some­thing more com­mon but no less eye-catching.

Her care­free cloth­ing and her come-hither con­duct was no small source of in­con­ven­ience. Cer­tainly I thought her an at­trac­tive woman, and see­ing her in such coarse con­di­tions ex­cited me pro­foundly. But mod­esty pre­vented me from any at­tempt at mar­ring a mar­ried household.

Indeed, in the first days of my stay I shunned all but the brief­est and most in­con­se­quen­tial of con­ver­sa­tions with my hosts, avoid­ing con­fron­ta­tion ex­cept at meals, try­ing to mind my Ps & Qs in the pres­ence of a mar­ried woman whom I had no busi­ness think­ing of as an­y­thing but my landlady.

Whenever we sat to­gether, I kept si­lent and spoke only when spoken to, and re­plied in as few words as I could. It wouldn’t be far from the truth, how­ever, to say that the two of them—she in par­tic­u­lar—quickly grew fond of me and kept find­ing ways to en­tice me into partic­ipation.

“Won’t you read us an­other of your pretty poems?” she asked me one night af­ter din­ner, sit­ting next to me and rest­ing her hand on my lap.

“Yes, young man,” he said across the ta­ble, “do read us an­other poem!”

So I re­cited for them one of my re­cent com­po­si­tions from memory.

“You are so gifted,” she said to me, pat­ting me a few times. “To write po­etry is one thing, but to re­cite it from mem­ory? It’s extraor­dinary.”

“Extraordinary!” he ex­claimed, echo­ing her praise. “Un­re­serv­edly extraor­dinary!”

Before long I was at ease with the state of affairs, and we were on first-name terms. I started to sit with them more of­ten and to en­gage with them more in­ti­mately. Hav­ing made her ac­quaint­ance through these sit­tings and these en­gage­ments, I de­vel­oped a tal­ent to pic­ture her ex­act like­ness in my mind’s eye at will—a tal­ent that, I asham­edly ad­mit, still comes handy on long, lone­some nights.

The first time, how­ever, that this tal­ent was put to use was not by choice, but rather due to the trick­ery of that sly­est of foxes—the hu­man subcon­scious.

I had been stay­ing with the New­mans for a cou­ple weeks when one night I had a cu­ri­ous vi­sion. I can­not re­mem­ber now whether I was asleep or awake, and it is prob­a­ble that even then I was un­de­cided on the mat­ter. An­y­how, I saw Joe im­pro­vis­ing a sar­a­band on the liv­ing-room pi­ano and Cyn­thia danc­ing with such fi­nesse as would “in­flame even very mod­est people”.

I hardly need to tell you that this was only a fig­ment of my im­ag­i­na­tion, for I had had nei­ther the honor of hear­ing the gent­le­man play nor the pleas­ure of watch­ing the lady dance. Yet, no mat­ter how scru­pu­lously I ex­am­ined the scene, I could not find a flaw that dis­tanced it from re­al­ity. Every key was struck with the proper fin­ger, every dis­so­nance re­solved to a sat­is­fy­ing con­cord. The golden hair, the green eyes, the slen­der nose, the plump lips, the snow-white teeth, the am­ple bos­oms, the round but­tocks—the whole of the woman’s im­age ap­peared so true to her flesh that I could not dis­so­ci­ate the im­ag­ined erot­i­cism from the an­i­mated form, and could not, as it were, “know the dancer from the dance”.

I could not bear it any longer. I had to have her.

The fol­low­ing morn­ing she came to my room with my break­fast. I had been awake for some time, but I was still ly­ing un­der the sheets. She set the tray down on my lap and was about to leave when I ex­tended my arm and grabbed her from behind.

“You want some­thing, love?” she asked.

“Er …” I felt my feet dipped in a bucket of ice wa­ter. I had to think fast. “Would you mind if I joined you for break­fast today?”

“Not at all!” she ex­cit­edly re­plied. “The more the merrier.”

She picked up the tray and started out. Hav­ing reached the door, she paused and looked back at me.

“You com­ing, love?”

“In a moment. I, um, need to change.”

She chuck­led and left. I took my time.

Minutes later I was in the kitchen, where the two of them were sit­ting in their usual spots at the table, across from each other. They hadn’t started yet.

“We waited for you,” she said.

“You didn’t have to,” I said. “Sorry I kept you so long.”

“Oh, it’s all right, love,” she as­sured me. “Come and sit now.” She pat­ted the seat of the chair to her right.

“Yes, son,” he said, briefly look­ing up from his news­pa­per. “Do sit down.”

Encouraged by their warm wel­come, I took my seat be­side her.

“You look es­pe­cially beau­ti­ful to­day,” I blurted out, al­ready em­bar­rassed be­fore fin­ish­ing the utterance.

“Why, thank you, love,” she said and pecked me on the cheek. “Look what a gent­le­man our guest is, Joe!”

“Indeed,” he said, nod­ding. “A true gentleman!”

Giddied by her kiss, I con­tin­ued with new­found confidence:

“I mean it. Your hair, for ex­am­ple, could eas­ily pass for real gold.”

“It’s in­cred­i­ble,” she said, shak­ing her curls, “what one can achieve at home with one of these hair color kits, isn’t it, sugar?”

“Incredible!” he ex­claimed, scratch­ing his head. “Ab­so­lutely incredible!”

“And your green eyes,” I said, “shine like two pieces of pol­ished emerald.”

“Oh,” she ut­tered, batting her eyelashes with pleasure, “won­drous lit­tle things, these gem­stone con­tact lenses, aren’t they, honey?”

“Without a doubt!” he said, squint­ing as he read his pa­per. “Just wonderful!”

“And your slen­der nose—” I started.

“The hand­i­work,” she said, in­hal­ing the aroma of her coffee, “of Dr Muz­zle­tough. He works mir­a­cles, that man.”

“He does,” said he, blow­ing his nose into his hand­ker­chief. “On my honor, he does!”

“And your teeth, white as snow—” I said.

“Bleached,” she said, grin­ning, “by none other than Dr Can­dy­floss—the best den­tist in the area.”

“None bet­ter!” he added, pick­ing his teeth.

“And your plump lips—” I said.

“Oh, that re­minds me,” she ex­claimed, bit­ing her lower lip. “My next filler-in­jec­tion ap­point­ment is this week. We wouldn’t want to for­get that now, would we, sweetheart?”

“No,” he said, blow­ing into his cup, “we would not.”

I fell si­lent. I had to be dis­creet. I waited for Joe to fin­ish his break­fast. A thought oc­curred to me.

“The liv­ing-room pi­ano,” I said at length.

“That old thing?” she asked. “Joe used to play it for guests at par­ties, and I used to dance along. But it’s been ly­ing there un­used for months.”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind hear­ing Joe play, if pos­si­ble,” I said. “And I would love to see you dance,” I added in a sul­try voice.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” she said af­ter a pen­sive si­lence, “to have the pi­ano tuner come over and touch it up. What do you think, baby?”

“Good idea,” he said, and left the kitchen to make a phone call.

Alone with her at last, I em­braced her and started to ca­ress her body.

“These breasts!” I whis­pered in her ear.

“I’m glad you like them, love,” she said, smil­ing. “Those sil­i­cone im­plants weren’t cheap.”

“My sweet Cyn­thia,” I said with pas­sion, “you are flawless.”

“Oh dar­ling,” she said, forc­ing the words out in a burst of laugh­ter, “if only they per­formed brain trans­plants.”

“Quite so!” I heard him ex­claim in the other room. “Quite so!”

27 July 2025