For herself, Julie chose a long, simple gown, deep green and close-fitting; and over it, she wore a garment like a full-length apron, almost the same clear, pale amber as her skin. The apron had no sides, being joined only at the hips and shoulders. Julie smoothed her hands down the dark ellipses and told Farrell, “They used to call these the Gates of Hell.”
“When did they stop?” he asked, and she giggled.
“This is prim, this is inhibited. High medieval clothing is the most sensual stuff anybody ever wore. I made a kirtle for the Lady Criseyde once—” She stopped, and then asked him, “Do you wonder where I’m taking you? What are you thinking?”
“I still think it’s a costume party. With any luck, maybe a costume orgy.”
Julie did not laugh. She said very quietly, “That happened once. You wouldn’t have liked it.”
A short green cloak for him, a longer gray mantle over her shoulders, the hood shrouding her loose hair, and she was saying in the milky night, “You’ll have to drive the bike. I’ll tell you how to go.”
Farrell blinked at the BSA lowering at the curb like a cumulonimbus. Julie put her key ring into his hand. “I can’t drive in this outfit, and I feel like taking the bike. You always like to drive my machines.”
“Not in the Macy’s Parade,” he grumbled. “It’s bad luck to humiliate a BSA.” But he was already unlocking the front fork, greedily but with a certain proper deference. He thought of Julie’s motorcycles as her familiar demons, a cross between hippogriffs and pit bulls.