Ginger, gliding coyly across the sand. Ginger. Tangy gingerroot engulfed in sweet honey. Warm hair, perfumed camel skin, mules that slip off like Cinderella’s glass slipper. Swaying, sashaying, a vixen startling wide-eyed youths. Emulation, Barbie lives and breathes, slinking into livelihood.

She reads men like dreams, men in awe of her mystical narcissism, dreaming of combing her caramel hair, tasting its candy-like grip.

Ginger looks over at Mary-Ann, the archrival. Rosy, robust, apple-pie cooling in the jungle. Mary-Ann is talking about her small-town roots, a freshly scrubbed piece of America. Girl-next-door, gingham simplicity, juvenile amazement at daring movements. She is the representation of safety locked in place with a wooden spoon, like Betty Crocker’s mother in her prime.

Ginger smiles wistfully as her roommate chatters trivially, in a language that separates country from city. Mary-Ann speaks with a halting innocence that draws the Professor into their hut, closer, like a hunter, a handsome bird catcher.

Ginger searches him. He blushes as his eyes are drawn to her cat-like face, to her desire ripened like coconuts on a tree. He thinks she does not see him shiver, that she is deaf to the heat in his voice as he tell Mary-Ann to hurry up.

But Ginger knows his fear, as she sighs heavily into the mirror, questions wet like morning dew and crumpled evening gowns, the eternal conflict. The turn of her profile brings jealousy and admiration, her face breeds lust, frightening her victims as they drown, basking in the glory of her caramel comfort.