Flesh For Fantasy. Joan Elizabeth Lloyd
“Of course.”
“So you’ll let me help you? For your mom and Steve and maybe even Walt and Carl.”
Barbara sighed. She wanted to let Maggie help. It was all so bizarre but it was a chance to get some of the things she wanted. It might be her only chance. “I guess.”
“Good,” Maggie said. “First, call in sick tomorrow and we’ll get your hair done, get someone to help you with your makeup and see what we can do about some clothes for you. I need to know something that’s a bit embarrassing. Is money a problem? I’m a bit short of funds, you realize.”
Barbara laughed out loud for the first time since Maggie had appeared the previous evening. “No. My job pays well and I don’t spend much. I’m not Saks Fifth Avenue-well off, but we could certainly go to the mall and dent my credit card.”
“Great.”
“You know, it sounds like fun.”
“It does, doesn’t it.”
“Will you be able to be here? I mean how do you just appear and disappear the way you do?”
Maggie thought, then answered, “I don’t know how.” She told Barbara about the revolving door. “I seem to be able to set some kind of clock, so I just come out of the door here at the right time.”
“Do you have powers? Like moving stuff with your mind or walking through walls?”
“I don’t think so, but Lucy and Angela seem to be in charge of that. They said I’d have what I needed when I needed it, so I’ll just have to trust them.” She stood up. “I’ve got to be going now.” She cocked her head to one side. “I don’t know how I know that, but I do.” She walked toward the bedroom door, then turned. “Tomorrow. Ninish.”
Barbara raised her hand and waved as Maggie walked through the bedroom door and vanished.
Barbara’s dreams were troubled for the first part of the night. She was in the car with Walt and Carl, but the car was really the gaping jaws of a giant mythical beast and, as the two men jumped out, the jaws began to close on her naked, immobile body. Then she was walking down the aisle in church dressed in a bridal gown, with her mother holding her arm, ready to give her away to the man who stood beside the priest, his back turned to her. When she reached his side, he turned, but he had no face. She looked down and saw that he was a tuxedoed store mannequin with two poles holding him up where his legs should have been.
The following morning, Barbara called her office and told the woman who answered the phone that she had urgent personal business and wouldn’t be in the office until the following day. She dressed in a man-tailored shirt and jeans, white socks and sneakers, grabbed a denim jacket and bounced down to the kitchen. Bounced, she thought, was a good word for the way she felt. Light. Elastic. Good!
She made a pot of strong coffee and toasted a bagel. She sat at the table munching and thinking about the day’s activities. “Good morning,” Maggie said from the doorway.
“Hi. Maggie,” Barbara responded. “Coffee?”
“I guess. This time warp thing I’m in is still very confusing. It seems like only a moment ago I left you last evening.”
“Nice outfit,” Barbara said.
Maggie looked down, puzzled. “I didn’t change clothes,” she whispered. Last evening she had had on an outfit similar to the clothes Barbara was wearing this morning. But now Maggie was wearing a pair of wide-legged black rayon pants and a soft gray silk blouse. “Very disconcerting,” she mumbled.
Barbara poured Maggie a mug of coffee and set it down beside a pitcher of milk and the sugar bowl. “Maggie,” she asked as her friend dropped into a chair. “How did you become a…I mean…?”
“Hooker?”
“Yeah. Well…”
“You mean how did a nice girl like me end up entertaining men for money.”
“You can’t blame me for being curious.”
Maggie grinned. “Of course not. And let’s get this settled right now. I’ve said it before. I am proud of what I do, er…did. I had my own rules and I stuck by them at all times. My customers and I had fun. We were careful and honest.”
“It’s just difficult for me to believe in the hooker with the heart of gold. It’s so clichéd.”
“Heart of gold. I like that. I like that a lot. Anyway, you asked how I got started in my business. It began with my first divorce.”
“You were married?” Barbara said, her eyes wide.
“Twice, but this is my story to tell. Anyway, Chuck and I married right out of high school in 1955 and stayed together for six years. The split was amicable. We just had nothing in common anymore. No kids, we both worked, our sex life was dull, dull, dull. He married again by the way, to a nice, mousey woman who seemed to make him happy. But that’s another story.
“As a divorcee, I slept around. That was a very loose time, before AIDS, very into me first. I found that I loved sex. I enjoyed pleasing the men I was with and I had fun learning how to do it. I was still just beginning to learn about fantasy when I met Bob. He had a wonderfully creative mind and taught me about all sorts of new things in the bedroom. When he suggested we get married, I thought I’d found my ultimate sex partner and in order to keep us together, I said yes.”
“He sounds like a wonderful lover.”
“He was and he taught me to be a giving, creative partner.”
“But…”
“But I couldn’t stand him outside of the bedroom. He and I were exact opposites. He was a neat freak, I’m a bit of a slob. He liked his meals at specific times, all organized, I like to scrounge for myself. You get it. So, after two fantastic years in the bedroom and two awful years everywhere else, we split, too. That was 1974, and it seems like forever ago. I was intensely glad when he left, but I was horny as hell. All the time. The one good thing about marriage is that you can usually have all the sex you want.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“It was for me. I still worked, of course. I was manager of the computer input department at a regional bank. I had very good people skills, as my boss called them, but I was bored. Bored, lonely and horny at home and bored, stressed, and frustrated at work. Not much of a life.”
Barbara patted the back of Maggie’s hand, well able to sympathize with the older woman.
“One evening I just couldn’t bear to go home to that empty apartment so I stopped at a bar near work. I’d been sitting at the bar for about an hour, feeling sorry for myself, when a cute-looking guy sat down on the stool next to mine.” Maggie closed her eyes and a smile changed her expression from despair to enjoyment as she remembered that evening. “I remember. I called myself Margaret at that time.”
“Hi,” the man said. “My name’s Frank.”
Maggie looked up, ready to brush the man off with a clever remark. But as she took in his charming smile, she changed her mind. “Hi. I’m Margaret.”
“Glad to meet you, Margaret. I come in here whenever I’m in town but I’ve never seen you before.”
“I’ve never been in here before,” Maggie said.
Frank placed his elbow on the bar and leaned his chin on his hand, studying Maggie’s face. “You know,” he said after a moment, “you don’t look like a Margaret.”
Maggie sipped her white wine, unwilling to make any overt gestures of friendliness toward this stranger who was in the process of picking her up in a bar. “And how would a Margaret look?”
“Oh, let’s see. Margaret is very serious. Tight bun. Thick glasses. Sensible