Laura has my hand in hers. It feels so good. But she’s tugging me along. “Come on,” she says in that voice I love. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Laura’s father is practicing. “We can still go in,” Laura says. “He doesn’t mind.”

The room is immense and white and cold. For a moment I think frost covers everything, even the piano, but then I see that it is some kind of wax which hasn’t been rubbed off. A small round man in a plain black suit, Laura’s father is playing, his back to us, fifteen or twenty feet away, and the music is quiet; it sounds like buckets of water being hauled up from an old-fashioned well, hand over hand. There is more space to the music than there is sound.

Laura hands me a white silk glove, thin with long fingers. “Use this,” she whispers.

I’m not sure what to use it for. At first I think to wipe the wax from the piano. The silk glove is so light and perfect. It seems a shame to spoil it. Also I don’t want to step past Laura’s dad, to interfere with his music. I’m afraid the brightly polished floor will squeak with me. Nevertheless I start to take a step. Laura stops me, her hand gently on my shoulder. She shakes her head. I shrug. She pantomimes: Her thin fingers circled against her thumb. Up and down strokes. Oh. She laughs silently, then brings her stroking pantomime to her mouth, opens, opens very wide and shortens the stroke, makes it rapid. I shiver. She smiles, cocks her head in question. She mimes taking off her shirt, pulling it over her head. I know she means me. I do it. She smiles, satisfied. It’s cold. Her fingertips touch my nipple, one to either side of that tiny pebble, flesh barely bigger than a grain of sand, and sandy colored, or the color of her clit, though not as large. She flickers her fingernails rapidly up and down upon the nipple, all the while looking into my eyes, a curious expression. It takes me a moment to realize her fingers are matching the music, trills chasing each other. When the music stops she stops. When it starts again, a kind of climbing and slipping back, she mimes me stepping out of my pants. “Everything,” her gesture says. She watches carefully as I do it. Shoes and socks, pants, underwear. My cock is impossibly hard and high. Her eyes are on it. She has an expression I can’t read.

“Dad,” she says. Her voice stops the music. Her father turns slowly on his bench. “Dad, I’d like you to meet my boyfriend Mat.”