In a world full of vogue-conscious beauties, Miriam was unique. Her sense of style was the product of a combination of raw instinct and a somewhat quirky taste for the offbeat and startling. This applied to her ideas of fashion as well as her behavior and of course made her controversial, no less than provocative, the sort of woman whose image ranged along a spectrum from brat to enchantress depending on whose point of view.

Miriam had grown up in the mountains of North Idaho, a dreamer through high school whose dreams soon enough drew her to Hollywood where she made her living in ways both versatile and capricious, including temp work as a word processor, occasional modeling, a bit of X-rated movie performing (more for the outré experience than for money), and quite a bit of this and that (which included being a writer for a lurid tabloid newspaper, tending bar, and verbally roasting party guests as a party-perker-upper). Like legions of people in Hollywood, she was writing a screenplay (based on her adventures), but unlike most of them hers was a double threat: literate and fascinating.

At home in the fantasyland of Hollywood, Miriam's favorite day of the year was Halloween. It was the one night in the year, she thought, when extraterrestrials might land and mingle with the people and none would be the wiser. It was also that adventurous night when she made every effort to end up with a lover whose identity and appearance were a mystery obscured by his costume.

There were always several Halloween parties to choose from, but on this Halloween Miriam decided to give priority to one being given by her friend Vale, a designer of sunglasses, at her apartment in Westwood. The invitation bore a lipstick print of Vale's voluptuous mouth, two coral pink parentheses, across the features of a new wave witch with a Neapolitan Mohawk. By Halloween morning Miriam still hadn't decided on a costume. Some people planned theirs weeks in advance, but she was essentially spontaneous and tended to improvise something at the last moment. Even after spending much of the morning at a cafe on the Strip sipping coffee and watching the Mercedeses and Silver Ghosts glide past in the sunlight, she still had no idea what she would wear. It was only when she found herself late in the afternoon back in her apartment that she started to think concertedly about it. In the kitchen, over a shot of tequila, she tapped her fingers on the table, deliberating.

Going to her closet, she started to rummage through clothing, touching silk and satin and denim and lace, pondering the possibilities. It wasn't until she glanced at her shadow on the closet door that the idea came to her. . .she would be a shadow. Yes. Perfect! She would wear a black leotard, black nylon stockings, and a black wig to hide her golden hair. She would paint her fingernails black and wear black velvet boots and use stage makeup to darken her face and hands. Only her eyes, blue as cut sapphires, would contrast with the blackness. . .but she would also wear a black domino mark to subdue their intensity. Excellent.

An hour later, dark as mystery from head to foot, she stood before the mirror in her bedroom. She lifted her hands caressingly up over the under curving of her breasts beneath the jet back fabric of the leotard, lightly stroking the sketchy presence of her nipples, then slid them slowly down to the planes of her thighs, bending slightly so she could glide her fingers lower to the curvaceous backs of her calves and down all the way to touch the sooty velvet tops of her boots with her gleaming black fingernails. Looking at herself in the mirror, she stuck out her tongue and its pinkness was startling by contrast. A thought came to her mind, and grinning, she went into the kitchen and took a licorice whip from a bowl and ate it, chewing it leisurely to juicy bits, and then returned to the mirror. Her tongue, as she extended it, gleamed with dark light. And now, primed by her touching, her body began to yearn with sensuality. She touched two fingers to the juncture between her thighs where the folds of her cunt could be felt palpably against the fabric of the leotard. As she did so the musculature of her cunt pulsed and she savored an incipient sensation of wet heat there, a little shudder tremored her body.

Patience, Miriam told herself. . .and then whispered, "Oh, fuck it. . . ." Within seconds she was standing ankle deep in a puddle of black leotard and with the fore and middle fingers of both hands was prying open the slit of her cunt. There was a tiny and all but subliminal peeling sound as the adhesive labia were separated and at once the tips of all four fingers were touched with wetness. With a small murmur, Miriam looked down to see a sheen of pearly glitter in the vestibule, a fat droplet clinging in tenuous suspension at the very base of her cunt in the manner of one of the last droplets of milk to spill from a carton.