The great benefit of my transgression was that Maddie was no longer a secret, no longer an apparition bound to the night. She helped clean the lab, swam with us in the sound, and joined us for meals. She enjoyed cooking, a task which Madison, oddly, did not, and spent time digging through recipes in the library. As Maddie thumbed through Le Repertoire de la Cuisine, Madison sat on the couch next to her reading the poems of Amy Lowell. As he tended the fireplace, Harry and I played gin rummy with his vintage pin-up girl deck.
We took the sailboat out on the water for a change of scenery. Harry was the only one who knew what he was doing, and he occasionally asked me to keep the tiller pointed in this or that direction as he adjusted the jib or, detecting a tear, replaced the main sail altogether. The girls watched as they reclined on the bow, Madison whispering to Maddie as Harry heaved and hoisted. When we were far enough out that no land was in sight, each couple decided to take time to themselves before heading back. Harry and Madison stayed up top, jumping into and out of the water as their suits remained dry on the deck. Maddie and I went below deck, where she immediately forced her hand up the leg of my bathing suit, and where I slid my hands into her striped bikini bottoms, too desperate to grab her bare behind to bother untying the cloth.
“I told Madison about this,” she said as she sucked my lip.
“Told Madison what?”
“That you’re obsessed with her bum.”
“*Your* bum,” I said. “Am I?”
“Mm-hmm,” she moaned, wrapping her arms around my neck and pressing against my groin. “I told her I only have to arch my back just a tiny bit and then you’re on your knees trying to fit my entire ass in your mouth.”
I squeezed both cheeks at the thought.
“And what did she say?”
“That Harry’s the opposite. Obsessed with her—my—tits.”
I pulled the fabric of her top to the sides, held her bare breasts in my palms.
“Difficult to choose,” I said.
“Is it?” Maddie pushed me away. She laid facedown across the small couch beneath the starboard porthole, raised her hips only slightly into the air, and began to untie each side of her bottoms. And, just as predicted, I was ready to tear the fabric away with my teeth.
In short, we were all suddenly friends.
The professor and I received cards one morning, slipped beneath our bedroom doors. “You are cordially invited to a masquerade in the ballroom,” they read.
Harry and I both arrived at the designated hour in our best suits, though mine, admittedly, was a bit academic, while Harry’s was a bit academic and also a bit small. A pair of black masks that covered only the eyes were placed for us on a hallway table. We put them on and glanced at each other, each of us still clearly identifiable.
But the girls, of course, were not. We entered to find a ballroom lit by at least four dozen candles scattered across the floor at various heights. A waltz played from speakers along the walls, and as Harry and I ambled toward the center of the room, we heard the door open behind us. Madison and Maddie entered, their heels clicking beneath their matching black evening dresses. Each dress was strapless, billowy below the waist, but tight around the torso, and each woman wore an elaborate Venetian mask—far more elaborate than Harry’s and mine—revealing only their brightly painted red lips.
One approached me, the other Harry.
“Handsome,” she said. She placed one of my hands snugly against the small of her back, held the other aloft, and bid me lead in a waltz.
“Try not to catch my dress on fire,” she said.
The four of us danced as the music swelled. I was a little rusty, but managed to stay mostly in time thanks to a class I’d taken a few years before for college credit. But Harry, for all his talents, was at a loss. He stomped across his partner’s hem, bumped against the candelabras, and frequently paused to acclimate himself to the rhythm. His body was too cumbersome, perhaps, but I also got the sense that the professor had simply never been too at ease on his feet.
“Triple time, professor,” I shouted, just happy to have one ability I could lord over him, and as we passed each other, I took his partner by the arm and folded her into our twosome, the three of us forming a small, giggling circle spinning around the candles as Harry watched.
“Poor Harry,” one of the girls said playfully, peeling away to help as he tried miming our steps.
I held my partner against me, unable to tell if this was my original dance mate or my second. I stared at her lips, trying to detect some subtle difference between Maddie’s and Madison’s, but I couldn’t, and she gave a knowing smile.
“What was the name of that bar we all went to last semester?” I asked. “Where that undergrad kept hitting on you?”
She didn’t respond, and instead gave me a soft kiss on the cheek.
“Nice try,” she smiled, and then spun herself away to take her turn with Harry.
He’d improved somewhat, and for that he had been rewarded with a smudge of lipstick on his cheek. My new partner crashed against me, laughed, and we picked up our pace.
“What was the name of that bar we all went to last semester? Where that undergrad kept hitting on you?”
“Nice try,” she said.
We took a break after Harry knocked over a candle. He opened a bottle of champagne and the two of us studied the girls as we drank.
“Their shoulders are the same,” he said. “Their necks, their lovely jawlines.”
They sipped from their glasses, refusing to offer any hints.
“They stand differently. She has an arm behind her back,” I said, nodding toward one of the girls. “And hers is crossed under her elbow,” I nodded toward the other.
“Behind the back is your Maddie,” Harry said. “Too demure to be Madison.” He waited for a reaction, but still they gave none.
“Their masks are slightly different,” I said. “red feathers for one, blue for the other.”
“Blue is Madison,” Harry said. “Then again—”
By the end of the night, the candles nearly exhausted, we were no closer to knowing Madison from Maddie. I had held both girls, dipped them, smelled the perfume on their necks. And both girls had kissed the corner of my mouth and grinned when I called them beautiful.
“A final dance,” one of the girls said. “Gentlemen’s pick.”
“And whoever you’re with when the song ends,” the other girl said. “That’s who you take home tonight.”
The piano began to play through the speaker. I grabbed the girl in the mask with the red feathers and ferried her onto the dance floor. Harry danced with the girl in blue.
But after a few passes around the room, he grabbed my partner, knocking over another candle in the process.
“No time, let it burn,” he shouted.
The song built, and this time I grabbed Harry’s partner by the arm, he mine. The girls laughed, just as unsure as we were at this point of who would leave with who. Harry took my partner again, I took his, then we swiftly exchanged again. He lunged for my partner’s hand on the next pass, but I pulled us away, only for him to succeed on the next go round.
The music swelled, surely approaching the end. I looked at the enticing girl in my arms and, desperate for one last test, I kissed her. I considered the taste of her lips, the way she tilted her head, the way her mouth responded, the way her entire body responded, and just when I thought I had it, when only a few more seconds with her lips would have provided an answer, Harry yanked her away. I held the girl in red in my arms, and the music stopped.
Even now they dragged out their reveal, each girl sauntering across the room to blow out the many candles. When they were done, they took our hands. Harry was led in one direction, toward a guest room in the east wing, while I was led back to my bedroom.