I can still see her-sculptured nose and tender mouth, huge eyes drowned in dreams…

I still see her, so pale, so pure, in the white lace billows of her wedding gown.

I was seventeen when that bitch married Harry, my older brother. The couple moved into the same house in which my parents and I lived.

In the beginning, my relations with my sister-in-law were entirely friendly. But gradually Jackie seemed to lose that reserve which had been one of her charms.

She became flirtatious. She would throw me secretive glances that would ignite inside me like firecrackers. And when we were alone, she would always manage to be sitting in some very provocative positions. She would drape herself over the edge of a table or the arm of a chair. She would cross her legs so high that I would have to turn my head away.

But Jackie didn't seem in the least bit embarrassed. She displayed her thighs casually. Sometimes she wouldn't hesitate to pull up her skirt to adjust her stockings in front of me.

And I would feel my heart pounding like someone caught cheating in school.

One day I was in my room, working on some algebra equations, when the door suddenly opened.

“Am I bothering you, Tony?”

Jackie walked right into the room and went over to sit on the edge of the couch. Then, while she slowly consumed a cigarette that she was holding cruelly in her fingers with their long nails, she said she pitied me for being forced to suffer over a math problem on such a beautiful May day.

“I'm certain that you'd prefer to go walking in the woods with a pretty girl…”

There was a gleam in her eyes.

“You must have a lot of admirers, don't you?”

And since I didn't answer: