The Bathing Beauty

The words on the sign propped outside the door of the nondescript yellow tent were almost too faded to read. Susie stopped to puzzle them out.

"The Bathing Beauty," she read. "Never Before Seen - One Night Only - A Privileged Few Shall Witness The Intimate Spectacle. What do you think it means?"

"Only one way to find out!"

They parted the flaps, and stepped into the cool interior of the tent. A single lamp hung from the high ceiling, casting shadows against the canvas walls, illuminating the single object that stood in the centre of the room. Three or four boys stood around it, maintaining a respectful silence, their faces thrown into darkness. The floor was lined with dirt, soft under Susie's feet. She smelt soap, and heard the trickle of water.

She glanced at the face of the closest boy, and recognised Ben, from her math class. "What the hell is this?" she snapped.

"Oh, hi, Susie. It's the bathing beauty."

"But... you can't look at that!"

"A little dehumanising," said Ben, mildly. "She's a person, not a thing. A very lovely person. That's why I'm looking at her. She wouldn't be at all interesting if she was a thing."

Susie couldn't think of a response. Her eyes turned to the large claw-footed bathtub that sat in the centre of the tent. It was filled almost up to the top with warm water, topped with a heavy layer of bubbles.

Emerging from the bubbles was the head and upper body of a woman. She was beautiful, elegant, probably of Mediterranean descent, with dark liquid eyes and an aquiline profile that conveyed a powerful suggestion of royalty. Her long, ebony-dark hair flowed down over her shoulders and clung to the slopes of her breasts, just barely revealed above the surface of the water. In a difference circumstance, she could have passed for Cleopatra. She scowled at Susie, who blushed in sympathy and looked away.

"See," explained Ben, "she'd like to get up and chase us out of here. But she can't. Because under the bubbles she doesn't have any clothes on."