"Rivers of life divine I see, And trees of paradise, I see a world of spirits bright, Who taste the pleasures there."

She spends the night with Dad, but where's the crime in that?

They snatched the baby early one morning.

At five the baby fell asleep having cried the night through, teething and an ear infection its issues.

If its parents had then dropped into exhausted slumber nothing would have happened.

But outside lay a beautiful crisp late spring morning, the sun had just risen behind their house and clean new light bathed the street. The couple needed to get out and be together and enjoy the stillness. Together they walked the dog around the block. They were gone no more than 10 minutes.

As time is infinitely divisible, 10 minutes to them is as long as ten days. They counted the infant abandoned. Further, they reckoned they had cause. If both conditions not been met, they would not have taken her.

The consequences for the parents were grim. Given their evident grief, no one, not police, investigators, reporters or social workers, thought them guilty of more than irresponsibility and horrible bad luck, still they barely escaped a charge of criminal neglect. The loss of their child destroyed them.

Often she would slide along her life. Her life, thanks to them, was like a video and she both player and viewer. And like a video, when viewing, it was look but not touch, experience but not change.

Sometimes she would settle into the happy times not long after her taking. When she lay with a toddler's scant self-centered awareness crowded amongst their own offspring.

Sometimes, though not often, she would skip earlier and be again the baby crawling across the carpet in a world of fractured shapes and sounds and textures. She would strain to sort out from the baby's unformed vision what the couple who owned the feet she'd targeted looked like, but all she ever knew was the sound of their encouraging laughing voices.

Sometimes, like a child picking at a scab, she'd visit her death. The ambulance would collect her, derelict and drunk, from the steps of the Boston Public Library. Her body a husk, dirty, her clothes indescribable rags. She would lie in the crowded intensive care, gasping, filled with drugs, surrounded by noise, aware only of their quiet calm eyes.

Sometimes she would shift to the time in her 40s when she worked as a waitress in a bar. As any who took food or drink from her were hers, those she fancied she took home and they'd wake the next day dazed and drained, the others she'd ply with drink they couldn't refuse and she'd make bets with herself (or one of them) as to whether her toy'd make it home, or wreck, or get arrested. It was more fun than keeno.

Sometimes she'd live the time when on her 18th year birthday, their richest prince (the word is not quite right) took her from the crowded dorm which was all she'd ever known, took her and her friend Chrysanthemum and two other friends as well which showed how he valued her, and made her his consort and the pleasure of their union lasted and stretched till when she looked at the world outside, it lay barren and airless, blasted by a swollen red sun.

Sometimes she'd visit the horrible moment, when she'd turned 28, when she was at the apex of her beauty and pride. She stood before them restrained, regarded and ruined. She stood while their calm voices explained the consequences of her crime. Her transgression, what it was they never said, could've occurred anytime in her life. For they, like us, punish to please the punisher, not to warn or correct the punished.

Sometimes she'd revisit the Christmas of her 19th year, when she and her companions descended upon a busy mall. Laughing they'd zeroed in on a pod of teenagers going to the movies. The film filled just before the kids got to the ticket counter and they wandered through the stores to kill time before the next showing. Every motion of their hands looked like shoplifting and they were repeatedly searched. Every mall guard thought them loitering and chivied them along. In front of Targets they happened upon similarly harassed kids from the next town over, loud and furious fighting erupted.

Early on she'd cut out the top boy, a senior, football captain and class president. He bought her a slice of pizza, and though he'd paid for it, he ate a bite from her fingers and that was that.

When his girlfriend of two years escaped the mall, talking loudly and distressedly with her friends about their horrible afternoon, wondering repeatedly about what could've happened to her Stevey. Why hadn't he been there to defend her when she was scratched, slugged and nearly stomped? Oh my god, there he was, in broad daylight, a girl bent under him on the hood of his car, he more dog than man.

The experience wouldn't leave the boy. He became haunted. He hunted for the girl and not finding her, gave himself to drugs.

"Heather, yours is the one to the side of the group over there," Chris told her, "The old guy. Mine's the big guy in the middle."

Heather'd just come off the stage and was catching her breath from dancing before moving out into the crowd to mingle. She squinted across the dim space and picked out her guy. He looked to be in his late forties, hair graying, face tired.

"Swap?" she asked hopefully.

"No way."

She sighed. Her friend was the same height as she, but rounder with the short copper colored hair appropriate for a girl named Chrysanthemum. Heather frowned. She'd rather have the big guy. She had a mental image of being fucked by him. Her eyes'd be looking up at his nipples. Oh well. She'd just have to get what fun she could out of her old guy.

"Oh Heather, maybe yours won't be so bad. Maybe he'll be like sweet and considerate. And you got the stud last time, right?

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He glanced at the picture then answered, turning away slightly from Tod, the guy next to him, and bending over to shield the phone.

"Hey Tom, how's it going?" Joan's voice asked. She was the only member of their team not out with the bachelor party crowd. This being the twenty-first century, she'd been asked but'd turned it down, as Roy'd hoped no doubt. She was the smartest member the team and the hardest working and the only woman. She was recently divorced with a grade school aged son. Even when young, she'd been attractive by way of her personality and her brains and her health so now in her thirties she'd lost nothing.

"Oh it's just swell," he said without enthusiasm. He hadn't been to such a place in 20 years at least. In fact, not since the guys at his job of the time'd dragged him out prior to his own marriage. The girl up there now was a redhead with large breasts that seemed to be doing their own dance unconnected to the music. He'd watched the one who'd just finished, a slim taut thing, with idle pleasure. She'd known how to dance, she'd seemed to bind and mold the awful music into something exciting and live.

He added, "I've been thinking a bit about why the databases are blocking under load. Maybe the indices on the video rights table could use some looking into."

"Oh Tom," she laughed, "I bet you're the life of that party. Has our bachelor boy been behaving himself?"

"He's telling Chuck about the Red Sox game he and Linda went to last night."

"What was that? It's too noisy there. Talk to you tomorrow," she said and was gone.

Roy was a large man who was beginning to go to fat. He was noisily and publicly happy with his fiance, a woman named Linda who worked in sales support. His conversation consisted solely of either sports or what he and Linda'd done the night before and since they often went to Fenway Park or Foxboro or in to the Garden, his two subjects were often indistinguishable. Actually he really had three subjects because he liked to talk about eating and diets.

His happiness annoyed Joan and when she and Tom had lunch together, she could be merciless. Mimicking Roy's somewhat high pitched ultra sincere voice she'd say, "Dude, after mass yesterday, me and Linda went to this little barbecue place. I had the pulled pork in blueberry sauce, Linda the blackened catfish, Dude, both were excellent and we both had cheesecake for desert. And neither of us will gain a pound because Dude, we've started this new diet. You drink 3 glasses of water before each meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner and it fills you right up and Dude, water has no calories! I only had 3 orders and normally I'd've had 4!"

Joan also pilloried Linda's tweets. Joan followed Linda solely for the purpose of ridiculing her to Tom. "Made Lasagna! Made Brownies! Made Nachos! Made water! Roy's coming to watch the Sox! Not gonna leave my sweety even for a pee!"

Tom actually liked Roy's enthusiasm for Linda. He didn't know exactly why.

If Joan was smartest of their group, Roy was definitely not. Joan was infinitely patient in trying to help him understand the delicate dance performed in a modern ajax driven website, by the browser, the webserver and the database engine. When she was done, Roy would have at least enough of the puzzle under control that he could fix the bug he was assigned.

He glanced about the dim room and froze. Not far from him stood the dancer he'd admired. She stood in a group of guys. They were dressed like guys after work, some in slacks and button down shirts with their ties missing or askew, some like his group, in jeans and knit shirts and running shoes. She wore nothing but a scant triangle over her crotch. It was the most erotic thing he'd ever seen. She looked so tiny and so naked. He watched her laugh and look up at one of the guys, her loose blond hair drifted in front of an eye and she brushed it behind an ear. The motion of her arm raised a breast. He'd admired them during her performance, but aesthetically. Now he felt like he was on fire.

Their waitress came by. Her large breasts wobbled freely, prominent blue veins crisscrossed them. Her ass threatened to pour out of her red vinyl hotpants. He felt her to be an alien insulting creature. He had been going to finish his beer and say so long. His departure wouldn't be missed. Now he ordered another May Day Ale and grimaced again as his fellows ordered Buds.

He stood. Roy, the groom, reached over across the table and grabbed his arm. "Hendon, I'm glad you came out man!"

Tom grinned and shouted, "You gotta put up with me a bit longer! I'm just going to the john!"

"That's great man!" Roy shouted, then he let Tom loose and turned back to the guy on the other side, "When he came to the plate, Linda and me gave him a standing O. We were the only ones up in my section, but I didn't care. I miss him. It was good to see him. The Sox were fucking assholes to trade him. There's no loyalty anymore. And, just like old times, he got bruised by a few foul tips".

Tom headed across to the nasty men's room. He'd been trying to avoid another trip, but with another beer coming the need couldn't be postponed. And his path would take him right by the girl's group. She was looking up at another guy, her hand on his arm. He wondered if they were friends, if she knew the guy, if she was just chatting him up.

As he drew near she looked over, grinned and called, "Hey, buy me a ginger ale?"

He flushed, stunned, but managed to say "Sure," his path to and from the john did take him by the bar.

On his way back, hands still damp from the sink, he hadn't been willing to stay in the fetid air long enough for the blow dryer to work, he stood by the bar and shouted for the ginger ale. She grinned at him from her group, maybe twenty feet away.

Another fellow pushed past her. He saw the guy's hand reach out and pinch her bottom. "Hey," she called angrily, "Keep your hands to yourself." The guy just laughed and moved on to the bar.

"She's a hot one," the guy said to no one in particular.

"That'll be 5 bucks," said the bartender. Tom winced and paid.

Tom handed her the ginger ale. She took it and smiled her thanks, listening with apparent interest to a guy in her group who was going on about something Tom didn't comprehend: "Since the advent of the spoiler on the COT, those guys have been just fucking horrible."

He sat back down and sipped his beer. He watched her miserably. After a time she went over to the bar. To his surprise he saw her stand next to the oaf who'd pinched her. She rubbed her bare shoulder on the guy's side. She looked such a little thing, like a kitten or a kid. She took the guy's drink from his surprised fingers, took a sip and then lifted it up to his open mouth.

After a moment she stood on tiptoe, leaned against the guy, her breasts pressed to his shirt. She kissed him on the cheek.

The bartender shouted, "Hey there! NO TOUCHING!"

She turned to the bartender, made a face, then she slipped away and Tom watched her vanish through a door marked "Employees only".

The copper haired girl had finished. After a few moments, the taut little blond thing strolled onto the stage to a goodly welcome of cheers and catcalls. The music roared and she moved and he felt locked in place.

It seemed both an instant and age to the end of her performance. When she vanished he felt a wave of despair and loneliness. "This is stupid," he told himself and stood. "Hey guys, I'm heading out. Best of luck Roy!"

Roy stood, "Hendon, I'm glad you came out man! Hope you enjoyed yourself."

He made his way across the room. He didn't see her anywhere. He stepped out the entryway, into the harshly lit night. The parking lot looked dark and hard and surreal. To his right he saw a little semi-circle of guys. In the open space in the middle, facing the cement wall of the bar, stood the pincher. His pants puddled about his ankles. He held his hands out before him, maybe a foot and a half apart like he had something in his grip. His ass made the jerking motions all males've found so natural since the first amphibian invented internal fertilization in the primordial swamp. The guy's dick was hard and reaching. His fleshy face grimaced with pleasure, effort and dream. He rutted vigorously with the air.

There came a shout: "Hey asshole! Stop that!" from the door and several burly bar guys hurried out.

Tom'd been transfixed for a moment, gawking like the other guys. Just as the bar security pushed through, the thrusting untouched dick spurted, splashing semen on the wall. Feeling disgusted, Tom pulled himself away as the first punch flew.

He turned his car onto the highway. It was four lanes and it stretched for miles through a land of strip malls, car dealerships, restaurants, and nightclubs. He would follow it 10 miles, the lights annoyingly frequent, then his house was a couple miles to the south.

Traffic was light. It was almost 1 in the morning. After the second light, he saw up ahead the nightmarish blue and red flashing lights of a prowl car. The traffic slowed and moved to the left lane. The cops had pulled a car over. A quick glimpse was enough to let him recognize one of the guys the girl'd been chatting with. He took a mental inventory, a little late now that he was behind the wheel. He'd had 5 beers over maybe 4 hours. He'd eaten before coming and'd shared an order of slimy nachos. He should be fine. He felt like he was driving fine.

There was a ding and the near-empty idiot light on his dash began to flash. "Shit," he muttered. There'd been a quarter tank, he was sure. He thought about the distance. He'd need gas.

He pulled into a Mobil station, 4 lines of angled pumps and a convenience store. A gray Civic was on the other side of his pump. Someone short and slim had her back to him, filling her tank.

She straightened. He felt such a jolt. It was the little dancer. He almost hadn't recognized her. Her smooth face shown from within her hoodie which was pulled up against the chill spring air. Below the sweater she wore jeans and flip flops. She looked like any young high school or college kid. A girl you'd admire in the mall. His mind superimposed images of her standing near naked in the crowd of guys and on the stage with the gleaming pole. Here, she looked like she'd just stepped off a school bus. He was so turned on, his cock positively hurt.

He forced himself to go through the motions of sliding his card in the slot, pressing his pin, fumbling with the nozzle. Soon she would finish and be gone. Of course she wouldn't recognize him!

"Hey!" she said with apparent pleasure, "I remember you. You were sweet and bought me a ginger ale."

He flushed. He couldn't think of anything to say, then managed, "I really enjoyed your dancing."

She smiled in the harsh light. "Well thanks. The parents put me in dance class through high school. Come see me tomorrow I mean tonight? I'm on at 9."

He looked at her, of course he'd had no thought of going back. He felt numb and lost.

Her pump clicked loudly and she said "Shit." She took the nozzle from her car and looked at it. "I paid for like 20 dollars worth, (my Visa's maxed and I had to prepay cash, I was like totally humiliated), and now it's only taken 15. There's almost 2 gallons left? Here!"

She held her nozzle with the hose snaking behind it through the gap to his side of the pump. He looked at it stupidly.

"Hey take it. You haven't even started pumping."

When he took it her fingers touched his hand and he almost dropped it. He now had a nozzle in each hand and seemed unable to sort out what to do.

She grinned at him. "Hey, you gotta like stick it in her hole. And don't try to save time and push the other one up her back hole. She'd come in a flash, but you'd be blown to bits." She smiled, a smile sweet and clean as a spring sunrise, then seeing his incomprehension, added "Your car, idiot." She flip-flopped to her Civic's door and slid in. She paused, "My name's Heather. It'd be nice if you came tonight. You haven't said thanks." Her door slammed. Her car hummed to life, rolled over the concrete and then accelerated hard down the highway.

Home, in the dark, he first drank several glasses of water as a hangover preventative, then, thinking about how wired and how turned on he was and how much he needed sleep, he masturbated. It took him a long time to come off, once he almost gave it up, but he always thought if he was ever unable to finish, it'd show he was old. His thoughts kept veering to memories of the girl Heather, how she'd looked on the stage, how she'd looked standing all but naked surrounded by drinking clothed guys, how she'd looked at the gas station and he had to force his mind back to his normal sequence, remembering one of the scenes in Fanny Hill. It'd always been his rule, right from when he'd started, never to think of a real person. It seemed rude.

After he showered, he lay in bed for a time, feeling dead. He remembered that he'd forgotten to do something. He stood and went into his dark kitchen. He turned on the stove light. It gave enough illumination to see his calendar. The next day, a Sunday, was blacked out. Below the calendar, on a bulletin board were baby pictures. He looked at them a time, finally touched one, turned off the light and went back to bed.

He had no sense of falling asleep, but he must've because he found himself in a dream. Afterward he realized that it'd been framed by a bit of Victorian erotica he'd read as a kid. His family'd visited his aunt and uncle's for the afternoon and in his cousin's closet, an older kid who was off at college, he'd found hidden behind some science fiction this thick paperback with the picture of a maid, hardly dressed, bending forward on the cover. It'd had some name like the Jewel or the Clam. He couldn't remember. When they'd left after dinner, the book'd left with him. Ever since, whenever he met that cousin, he felt guilty.

Anyhow, in it, a guy goes to a party in Paris, meets a bevy of girls dressed in Turkish costume, all gauze, Turkish pajamas low on their hips, and he picks one and as an initiation, he has to fuck her on a couch on a dais, with everyone watching. What we read when we're young to turn on has a lasting influence on our imaginations.

In his dream, he and the other guys of the bachelor party walked down the sidewalk of one of the failing malls that lined the highway. At one end stood the immense shape of a dead superstore, an early Home Depot competitor, "Your Hardware", which'd built a mammoth box and then gone bust. For the last ten years an increasingly frayed sign'd proclaimed in huge letters: "145,000 Sq Ft for Lease". It remained empty.

They walked through its glass doors which amazingly still worked, sliding open before them and closed behind them, and into another world. Right in front of them was a dark ornamental stream, 10 feet across, which stretched to the left and right along the walls of the box. In it the dim gold shapes of carp could be seen hovering, as though suspended in air. There was an arching bridge, then an area of gravel paths and ornamental trees in wooden pots. From the left, there came the sounds of a band. A woman's beautiful airy soprano voice floated over the guitars and drums. He recognized a song he'd liked when young. He was sure it was Sandy Denny singing. For a moment he listened:

Oh, I forbid you, maidens all Who wear gold mixed in your hair, To come or go by Carter Hall For young Tam-Lin awaits you there. There's none that goes by Carter Hall But must leave him a pledge; Either gold ring, or green mantle, Or else a maidenhead.

They crossed the bridge, it echoed under their feet. Then they followed the sound of the band and came to a raised dance floor. The band was to one side, just before the stream and the wall of the box. To the other was a bar. The bar was staffed by a couple women slightly older than those who danced with each other or who lay on the silk red and gold cushions that were scattered about.

Lounging on a large leather couch on a raised platform in the center of the dance floor sat the largest man Tom'd ever seen.

Later in the night, when the man and Roy faced off, Roy who was 6'5 appeared to be at least a hand's length the shorter. Roy'd gotten into a who's strongest argument and was trying to hold his arm out straight with one of the girls, the copper haired dancer, sitting on it like she was perched on a tree limb. Roy managed it for almost a minute then he began to tremble and his arm collapsed, sending the girl tumbling onto the cushions. There she lay, grinning up at him like a cat.

The huge man squatted, stretched out both his arms and a sweet young woman placed her rear on either. He seemed to breath out and stand without effort. The girls balanced themselves by putting a hand on his head, then they lifted their arms and he could've stood there mocking Roy forever. After what felt like an eternity, each girl swung a leg over so she straddled her supporting arm. They each slid out further, rubbing their sexes along his suit coat, till they were at either wrist. The man bent his hands up and caressed their slits with his middle fingers. After a moment the girls began to shiver and bounce. His outstretched arms held steady. The girls each shook and orgasmed. One fell off, the other he tossed in the air, like a boy playing with one of his sister's stuffed animals. He caught her, turned her so her back was to him and casually impaled her on his rampant cock. She shrieked and shook in renewed pleasure, affixed to him like a strange figurehead on a ship.

Now, as they first approached, the man sat on the couch. He wore a dark business suit, tie loose about his neck. The girl, Heather, sat calmly beside him, her side pressed to his. Though she sat erect, the top of her head was well below the level of his shoulder.

Tom wished that he could call Joan, he imagined talking to her about what a clear example of sexual dimorphism this was. There was supposedly less size difference between males and females in people as opposed to our great ape relatives. Here was clear counter example.

Heather's eyes met Tom's, they were calm and proud. Tom saw that the man's pants were open. Heather's hand held his cock coolly, like she owned it. Her fist, at its base, only covered a third of its length. Another woman knelt between the man's thick thighs, licking his balls. A third, the red haired dancer bent over his lap from the other side, her mouth made a wide O to circle him with her lips. Two other women stood behind the couch, their hands in his wiry hair and on his shoulders. Elsewhere young women lounged on cushions, and towards the band, some danced with each other.

Steve, standing by Tom, whispered, "Hey, there aren't any other guys here, just that dude. This place rocks!"

The huge man stood up, seeming to shed the women about him, save Heather, who also stood. She held his cock a moment longer than relinquished it, allowing the kneeling girl to straighten his clothing.

"You are all welcome!" the man proclaimed in a loud voice. "You are my guests and may eat, drink and yes fuck without fear or obligation. The bar, like my women's legs, is open! Enjoy!"

The girls flowed from him like a mist. The red haired dancer went to Roy. Heather came toward Tom. She passed close to 2 of the other guys, they sought to catch her arm but she slipped by them and stopped in front of Tom, head tilted back so she could grin up at him.

"Hey," she said.

Her trim little body - hardly hidden at all by the mist of her cloak, by her blouse whose thin material merely colored the light as it passed through, by the translucent gauze of her loose fitting, low hung pants - her trim little body filled him with almost uncontrollable desire.

"So what's your name?" she asked, gazing up at him with amused eyes

"Oh sorry, Tom, Tom Hendon."

She looked up at him with continued amusement. He felt he had to say something. He managed, "He is the largest man I've ever seen," looking at the huge man.

"As you are dreaming and it is your dream, he is the Tam Lin of the song," she said, "Who inspired the ballad so long ago."

He asked, "Of the gold rings, green mantles, and maidenheads?"

"Gold rings and green mantles - no. Maidenheads - yes. And the owners of the maidenheads always did best to keep their distance. Most of the ballad is crap."

"Let's dance," she said. And in the way of dreams they were instantly dancing in front of the band. To his surprise, he actually knew how to dance well, none of that bobbing about like a duck that'd so irritated his wife. He moved in perfect synchrony with Heather and the music and since it was music he liked, he felt such a surge of excitement and electricity. He caught her and spun her and lifted her, he saw a semi-circle gathering to watch. Somehow he knew all the moves and steps and kept the patterns going when the slightest foul up in where he stepped would cause them to wind up a tangle of limbs on the floor. Somehow, the slightest pressure of her hand, or a look of her eye and he'd keep up with her lead as she took their dance in some new direction. If this had been all of the dream, if he'd just danced and danced and danced and then awoken, he would have counted it the best and happiest dream of his life.

After a time, they stopped, he panting, she hardly seeming to breath at all. She led him to the bar. "Here, I can drink," she grinned. She took a Strawberry Daiquiri. He another beer.

There came shouting from near the dais. Men's voices chanted "Roy! Roy! Roy!", these shouts mingled with the women's calls of "Chris! Chris!". Loud wild hoots and whistles echoed from both women and men.

Heather took his hand and led him across the dance floor to where they'd been greeted. Roy stood on the dais before the couch. Chris'd glued herself to him the way a girl greets her lover when he returns from a long trip, her hands clutched behind his neck, her legs scissored around his hips, her eager excited face turned up to meet his lips. What guy would not kiss the girl who has freed his cock from its confinement and settled herself down onto it? Saving him the wait till they're home and he has her in bed? Even if she has met him in a crowded airport concourse?

The girl, Chris, wore nothing but her glittering high heeled slippers and as Tom and Heather settled on a cushion, she began rocking herself up and down, assisted by Roy's hands under her ass.

"I should make myself wake," Tom said, looking at Heather, at how her soft breasts barely took support from the film of her blouse. "This dream is nasty. I shouldn't imagine people I know this way. It's nasty."

She put a hand on his thigh and took his hand and kissed his palm.

Two softly giggling women stepped up onto the dais, knelt on either side of Roy and made stirrups with their hands. Chris set the toes of her slippers on their hands and with better purchase fucked Roy the harder. Roy grimly rocked his ass forward and back. Tom realized that Roy stood in exactly the same attitude as that of the man who'd fucked air outside the strip club.

Heather stood, touched Tom's shoulder reassuringly and carrying her daiquiri, stepped up onto the dais. She held the glass out to Chris. Chris clutched it and drank with the thirsty grateful efficiency of a marathon runner at a water station.