In the Land of the Long White Cloud

though an additional mantle hid their bodies from the men’s prurient gazes. They slipped into the room, cleaving to one another, and lifted the giant hood beneath which they had hidden their heads until they felt they were safe. As safe as this place got.
    They kept their blonde heads lowered; presumably they usually remained that way until Daphne entered to introduce them. Since that was not the case today, one of them looked up. Lucas found himself looking into a narrow face with mistrustful light-blue eyes.
    “Good evening, sir. We feel honored that you’ve requested us,” she said, obviously reciting a well-rehearsed speech. “I’m Mary.”
    “And I’m Laurie,” the second one explained. “Daphne told us you…”
    “I’ll only watch you, no need to worry,” Lucas said kindly. He would never have touched these children, though in one respect they certainly met his expectations: as Mary and Laurie let their mantle fall to the floor, standing there naked as God made them, he saw how boyishly slender they were.
    “I hope you enjoy our presentation,” Laurie said politely, taking her sister’s hand. It was a reassuring gesture, more of a search for protection than the beginning of a sexual show. Lucas wondered how these girls had fallen into this line of work.
    The girls moved to the bed but did not slip between the sheets. Instead, they knelt before each other and began to embrace and kiss each other. Over the next half hour, Lucas saw gestures and positions that alternatingly made him blush and made his blood run cold.The things the girls did with each other were the height of impropriety. But Lucas did not find it revolting. It reminded him too much of his own dreams of uniting with a body that mirrored his own—a loving union of dignity and mutual respect. Lucas did not know whether the girls derived any pleasure from their obscene acts but could not imagine that they did. Yet there was undoubtedly love in the looks the sisters gave each other, and tenderness inherent in their touches. Their erotic performance had a confusing effect on the observer—as time went on, the boundaries between their bodies seemed to blur; the girls looked so similar that at one point they gave rise to the illusion they were a single dancing goddess with four arms and two heads. Lucas remembered seeing pictures of such a thing from the Crown Colony of India. Though he preferred drawing girls to making love to them, he found the sight strangely alluring. There was something almost artistic about their dance. The two of them finally froze in a tight embrace on the bed and did not release one another until Lucas applauded.
    Laurie cast a searching gaze at the fly of his pants when she came out of her trance.
    “Did you enjoy it?” she asked anxiously when she noticed that Lucas’s fly was still done and that his face showed no sign of his having masturbated. “We…we could touch you too, but…”
    The girl’s expression showed that she would not be enthusiastic about it, but there must have been men who asked for their money back if they did not reach climax.
    “Though Daphne usually does that,” Mary added.
    Lucas shook his head. “That won’t be necessary, thank you. I very much enjoyed your dance. Like Daphne said—it was something very special. But how did you end up doing this? One doesn’t expect to see something like that in establishments like this.”
    The girls sighed with relief as they wrapped themselves up in their mantle again, but they remained seated on the edge of the bed. Apparently, they no longer viewed Lucas as a threat.
    “Oh it was Daphne’s idea,” Laurie informed him freely. The two girls had sweet, twittering voices—another sign that they had hardly grown out of adolescence.
    “We had to earn money,” Mary continued. “But we didn’t want to…we couldn’t…it is sinful to lie with a man for money, you know.”
    Lucas wondered if they had also learned that from Daphne. However, they did not seem to actually subscribe to this belief themselves.
    “Though it is necessary sometimes,” Laurie defended her colleague. “But Daphne says you have to be grown up for that. Only—Madame Jolanda didn’t think so, and so…”
    “So Daphne found something in one of her books. A weird book full of…dirty things. But Madame Jolanda says that where the book comes from it’s not sinful if you…”
    “And what we do isn’t sinful anyway!” Mary said with conviction.
    “You