Mme. Salome Du Valmont

Sitting before you is a woman of enrapturing and unearthly beauty. In the flickering light of the candle near her, she seems for a moment to be in her twenties, then thirties, then perhaps a youthful forty. Her large blonde eyes are highlighted with black liner and vivid, but show age and pain too profound for any twenty-year-old. Kissable, pouting lips glisten with a trace of rose lipstick; you suspect it is exotically flavoured.

Salome's creamy flesh is modestly covered, but has a warm, ruddy tone and the smoothness of someone who does not see the sun; much like the Irish and their mist-softened complexions. The glossy mane of auburn curls fall from a widow's peak past her waist, pooling artistically around her on the chaise she lounges on. Perhaps to your surprise, you wonder how those curls would look spread across a pillow; in sleep or tousled in passion.

Male or female, you find yourself reacting oddly to this woman. You draw yourself up to your full height, perhaps suck in a hint of a paunch given you by too many nights of Dionysian indulgence. You hear yourself choosing your words with more deliberance than usual, perhaps words you have not used since your University admissions essays and college board exams. Language falls effortlessly from your lips: "tergiversation," "atavistic," "et hoc genus omne."

Even your gestures seem more measured, show more bearing. You must admit, she seems to bring out the best in you, but you cannot say whether it is to seduce her, impress her, or merely assert yourself in her nearly intoxicating presence. You might even wipe at your brow offhandedly when you do not think she is watching you... the heat emanating from this woman is intense, as if too close to some raging forest fire. At the same time, however, while she plays the perfect hostess and laughs appropriately at your humour; you know in your heart this is something like those crushes on school teachers years ago. Her sheer unattainable aura, however, draws you closer to her.

Salome is devastatingly beautiful, though perhaps not in any vogue manner. Though encased in a high-fashion silken poet's shirt and tailored leather slacks, she seems more at home in a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti or some other Pre-Raphelite master. You imagination unconsciously places her in an Empire gown of embroidered burnt umber velvet, seed pearls sprinkled in her curls. Looking closer, you might discern a voluptuous figure, high and full breasts, and a tiny waist gently flaring into Rubenesque hips.

She leans over the chair as she speaks to you in the manner of a jungle cat... even her gestures make you wonder if she might not purr should your words please her. It is sensual, but not in the least human. She does not seem very tall-- perhaps five five were she to stand-- but her movements have a grace and presence making her seem larger; royal or metempsychotic, perhaps.

She fixes her gaze evenly upon you, and lets out a quiet laugh, small wind chimes caressed by a May breeze. Her voice, when she speaks, has a timbre you have never before heard... not traditionally feminine, but sensual, evoking some meld of Bacall, Monroe, and the archaic bawdiness of Mae West. But beyond the obvious erotic value of her tones, there is something soothing about her words, how they run together like a brook over small stones. Her French is inflected with the accent of the finest Sorbonne education, her English that gentle, sophisticated London-BBC style Americans find so cultured.

"Bonsoir, enchantee, je sais. Je m'appelle la Viscomptess de Valmont. You might know me by one of my other names... I have been clept so many over the aeons. Lilith, Salome, Athena; I am the nightmare you wake from screaming, and the erotic dreams entrancing your sleep. I am deeply regretful neither I nor Trent have the time to entertain you right now, but do stay and look around... I shall soon return, and we have so much to speak on..."

Salome rises from the chaise preternaturally fluidly, each muscle stretching and lining her slacks in a Michaelangean bas-relief, curls falling fully around her in a halo. She pauses at the door, calling back over her shoulder and off-handedly gesturing for you to take the vacated couch.

I implore you rest, cheri, the night is so long...