George Washington's Ghost

The door opened a crack.

“May I come in?”

Henrietta?

What was she doing here?

The door opened and closed quickly and in a moment Henrietta De L’Isle was standing with her back pressed against it. She was still dressed in the cream blouse and pleated peach-coloured skirt she had worn earlier.

Alonso, naked and desperately covering up his submerged manhood with both hands, inadvertently splashed and caused a minor flood around the overlarge bath tub.

“Henrietta,” he muttered, like an idiot, obviously.

“Yes,” the woman agreed, shifting uncomfortably on her feet and trying very hard – and failing – to stare at the man in the bath. In the steamy humidity of the room short strands of her boyishly cropped auburn hair stood on end. The fog rising off the waters could not begin to hide her flushing embarrassment.

“I acted like a fool before,” Alonso said, not knowing what else to say.

“No, you didn’t,” the newcomer objected. “This is all very awkward, and it must be horribly, well, strange for you… But Melody is right, we can’t go on like this and besides, we, Melody and I, had a long chat about things yesterday.”

“You did?”

“Yes,” Henrietta agreed. “And there’s Pedro to be considered…”

Talking had enabled her to slough off a little of her initial discomfort; now, she looked around for the stool that was always somewhere in the mansion’s bathrooms, and finding it, drew it close to the tub and sat down. Primly, she clamped her knees together and folded her hands in her lap before again, attempting to focus on Alonso’s face, rather than his leanly muscled torso and manhood, presently concealed beneath the water and his hands.

“Melody has decided to carry on being a spook,” Henrietta continued. “Only, this time, officially. She loved being a detective. But she knows she can’t go back to that, any more than you or I can go back to our old lives. And, as I said, now there’s Pedro to think about. I’d want to adopt him even if he wasn’t your son. As he is, your son, I mean, that makes it even better. Perfect, in fact. As if it was meant to be…”

Alonso was speechless.

Henrietta frowned.

“I suppose if I was Melody, we’d be having this conversation in the bath,” she added, clearly on the cusp of losing her courage.

Suddenly, she was looking to the man for a sign, a moral prop, something that told her she was not making a complete fool of herself, or that she was not about to be utterly humiliated.

Alonso vented a bewildered laugh.

Henrietta began to rise from the stool, near to flight.

He touched her arm with the tips of the fingers of his left hand.

“Don’t go. Please stay.”

Henrietta shivered.

Betwixt and between she was momentarily at a loss.

She squeezed her eyes shut, berated herself for her uncharacteristic timidity.

Forcing a smile, she suggested, hoarse: “I think You will need to let a little water out of the bath…”

Alonso half-smiled in askance.

“If I get in with you, I mean, we’ll flood the whole bathroom,” Henrietta explained, looking at her feet.

This had all seemed so simple when Melody had suggested a way to ‘break the ice’ with Alonso. She was suddenly afraid what she planned might come across as sluttish, as if she was throwing herself at him and that was no basis for a lasting relationship.

“This was Melody’s idea?” The man asked rhetorically.

Henrietta nodded.

“She says one of us should marry you but,” she shrugged, “she thinks she’d make you unhappy. She says she’s not the wife a man like you needs or deserves… but I know you are crazy about her and that she loves you.”

Alonso gritted his teeth and tried to step past the unreality of the conversation.

“Melody and I have never discussed such things.”

“No,” Henrietta giggled, venting a little pent up nervous energy, “you were too busy…”

Her voice trailed away.

“Having sex and generally endeavouring to exchange bodily fluids?” The man in the bath suggested, dryly.

“Yes… I’ve been a little jealous about that, actually,” Henrietta confessed. “I cried my eyes out when you slept with Melody back at your house in Chinchón, by the way. I was angry with Melody, but I blamed you for seducing her. How stupid is that? Mostly, I was hurt because I thought I’d lost you forever. Sorry, all this must sound completely weird…”

That was the moment Henrietta realised she needed to stop talking: rising to her feet she began, jerkily horribly uncomfortably, to peel off her blouse, over her shoulders and head, revealing her arms, shoulders, and – she had always thought – slightly overlarge breasts, presently, teasingly contained in a lacy, white bra. She knew better than to risk meeting Alonso’s eye as she stepped out of her skirt, and turned away and with oddly numb fingers, unhooked the clasps of her bra, letting her breasts sag a little, free. She kicked away her knickers.