Cain was significantly older than me. By about nine years. My mother worried for me sometimes, because I had never taken to boys my own age, boys in school. The last straw for me had been when Milo Peterson had pinned me against the wall behind the theater curtains during a rehearsal, sometime in late winter. He smelled like burnt french fries and sweat, and his manhood pressed against me, aroused by my precarious position. I never liked him, but there was that little sparkle of cruelty in his eyes that had fascinated me, and since I was curious about everything, especially sex, I let him kiss me. It was disappointing. His slimey tongue probed around my mouth like a worm seeking wet dirt, no grace, not even the courtesy of a dirty limerick to get me in the mood. I shoved him off and trundled away to finish painting props, while he departed to what I could only guess was the bathroom.

I was seventeen, but I wanted to be swept off my feet by a smooth madman. Someone with a grasp on delicate phrases, with a gentle and rough touch, someone who was a little cruel, but just so. I didn't have patience for never-ending cruelty, or for men who couldn't fall prey to woman's subtle wiles. Even at seventeen I knew I possessed these wiles, and I wanted a man who knew it too.

Yes, a man. Boys were groping and quick to pleasure, clumsily focused on the moment of truth instead of all the little lies along the way.

I was not sexless, mind you. I think that my craving for sex blossomed early, but as my demands on partners were so high as to be unattainable, I eventually mastered the fine art of self-satisfaction. I looked longingly on girls in class, wondering about a female body that was not my own, trying to fan a flame of curiosity into passion. Maybe girls were better. But I talked to my lesbian friends and was equally unimpressed.

The summer of my junior year, I was practically on fire. I longed for the touch of the other sex, but I had scared off all the boys in my classes with talk of castration or simple dowdy dressing. I knew I had a body, and I liked it, but I did not want to have to fight for attention. I would be seen by someone who had the eyes to see me. And nothing less.

I've been told by some older women that such views are folly and lead only to loneliness. Now that I am older, I know that these women are the ones embracing folly. We should be seen only by those with the eyes to see us, otherwise we are merely shadow puppets.

It was the summer at the height of my sexual curiosity in adolescence that I met Cain. That first glimpse in the window of his bookstore led to an obsession. Why was I so taken by him? He did not see me for so long. I broke my own rule. I went under the radar, transfixed. I'd come back the next day, and he would have already washed my noseprints from the windows. I saw him do it once, and he didn't even furrow a brow. He sat in a trance much of the time, a tenuous visitor of our reality, when he was not engaged in his books.

Oh, his books. How he loved them. One day I became courageous enough to visit his shop during the day, and I went in to browse. I kept stealing glances at him. He merely pushed his reading glasses higher on his nose and nodded at some truth on the page.

I was a bit sad to have been so unworthy of his attention, but I had warned myself prior not to expect much. Finally I settled on an older volume about the story of the Minotaur. It was forty dollars and would take all of the money I had earned that week at the flower shop. I hoped that my special taste would impress him.

I slid the dusty tome across the counter. First he looked at the book, then he looked at me. He seemed to be sorting me out.

Good, I had gotten his attention.

"I'm sorry, this volume isn't for sale." He slipped the book back under the counter sheepishly.

I was so taken aback by the gesture that I stuttered a moment. "But- But that's the one I wanted."

He seemed shocked at my resistance. I wondered if anyone had ever argued with him before.

He came around the counter and passed me in a flurry, to the more popular books. He picked a brightly-colored paperback off the shelf. "This is essentially about the same topic. Why don't you get it? It's only nineteen ninety-nine." He offered it to me confidently, as if it would surely satiate me.

I blinked at him. "Why do you own a bookstore if you don't want to sell any of your books?"

He acted as if I had pulled aside a curtain to reveal his nudity. "It was just a mistake. It shouldn't have been put on the shelf."

I didn't want to upset him further, so I bought the book. I didn't try to talk to him further. I was too unsettled by the experience.

Over time, his reaction only intrigued me further. I went back in and saw the book was back on the shelf. I watched as he gave the same treatment to other customers. Sometimes he would ultimately part with the books, but he usually seemed so disturbed by the experience that he wouldn't continue his reading for some time.

Cain never remembered me, until the day I caught him at his apartment, d