On many nights I heard the woman of the house turning fitfully in her own bed, as if she shared my doubts. The floorboards would creak as she padded down the hall to the bathroom, then the heavy porcelain toilet seat would clink as she sat down to relieve herself. I could hear the sounds her body made, hear her sigh, hear her splashing water on her hands. Sometimes I wondered what would happen if I walked out into the hallway to meet her. If I opened my arms to her, would her stony flesh soften against my body?

Days in my room were dim and airless, like abandoned mine shafts. I spent hours watching the stretch of blowzy weeds that lay between my window and the battered, naked barn. The structure was broad and tall, with secretive windows set high on its peeling face. One afternoon, when I was exhausted from not working, I sneaked out to have a look. The landlady watched me from the kitchen window, probably thinking what a nosy fool I was. The gravel bit into my bare knees as I crouched down and peered through a crack in the door of the barn, but when I saw the interior, I forgot that small discomfort. I almost forgot to breathe.

The barn was as empty and as numb with light as a church without pews, except for a woman who hung, naked, from a rope on the ceiling. She drifted like a trapeze artist, her thighs curved around the shaft of the rope, her head thrown back. Her vulva was opened coarsely by the rope's weave, her damp lips sucking the thick strand. With one graceful surge she lifted her body, cunt clinging as she rose, and whirled slowly in the pillar of a sunbeam. The tips of her long, barley-blond hair tickled the cleft of her buttocks, and my own skin tingled in sympathy. As I watched, she played games with the rope, made love to it, licking and caressing the cords. Embracing a knot at the base of the rope with the soles of her nude feet, she bent and straightened her knees in a sensual plie.