Flesh For Fantasy Read online

  “We never do,” Maggie said sadly.

  “Anyway, Carl and I made dinner plans for a few days later. We had a wonderful meal and a few too many drinks. He was attentive and seemed interested in everything I had to say. His eyes were so deep brown as to be almost black. His hair was also dark brown and he had nice hands. I’m a sucker for men with great hands.”

  “Me too.” Maggie smiled, thinking about how many men’s hands had touched her over the years.

  “After dinner, Carl suggested a drive along the Hudson. We used my car, parked in a darkened area he knew about and kissed like teenagers. One thing led to another and suddenly my blouse was off and my bra was open. His mouth was on me and he was whispering, ‘Babs, sweetie, oh, Babs.’ Suddenly Walt pulled the car door open and snapped a flash picture of me, naked from the waist up.

  “ You win, Carl baby,’ Walt said. ‘I can’t deny it when I have the proof and a great shot of Babs’ tits right here.’ I watched the picture spit out of the front of the camera and slowly appear before my eyes.”

  “Win what?” Maggie asked, annoyed by the pain inflicted by something that to those two probably amounted to nothing more than a prank.

  “They had made a bet that Carl couldn’t get my upper body exposed on the first date. Right there in the car Walt counted out a hundred dollars and handed it to Carl. Walt said that he didn’t think anyone could get the ice bitch out of her clothes in under six months. They laughed, pounded each other on the back, then the two of them walked to Walt’s car, and took off.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, oh.”

  “Well that wasn’t the end of the world, was it?”

  Barbara just stared at the ceiling. “I never told anyone about that night and, I guess, Walt never did either. I spent the next few weeks waiting for the picture or the story to circulate, but for some unknown reason, nothing happened.”

  “Did you ever see them again?”

  “I never saw Carl again. He must have been ‘imported talent.’” She said the phrase with a sneer. “I see Walt once in a while, but he’s not a church type and I stick almost completely to church gatherings.”

  “Safe stuff. No risk of anyone getting sexual.” Maggie took Barbara’s hand. “Wouldn’t you like to get him back sometime?”

  Barbara smiled. “I’d love to, but there’s no hope of that.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. It just gives us another reason to make you over and get you some experience.” She paused. “Are you a virgin?”

  Barbara sat upright. “What a question.”

  “Well…”

  “No. I’ve had relationships.” She slumped back down onto her back. “But not recently.”

  “And Steve? Wouldn’t you like him to notice you?”

  “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.”

  “H
e 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 shoes.”

  Maggie thought about that and realized that, in the months since she and Bob had gone their separate ways, she had become just what Frank pictured. No, she thought, I won’t be that person. I’m only thirty-three. She took a large swallow of her wine and sat up a bit straighter. “Okay. I guess I can’t be that kind of Margaret. What would you call me?”

  “Well, Margie is young, pert, and too cute to be believed, so that’s not you. And Peggy is an Irish lass with red hair and freckles.”

  “Okay. Neither of those sound like me. So who am I?”

  “You look like a Maggie. Nice-looking. Interesting and interested. Open to new experiences.”

  “What a line you’ve got,” Maggie said, realizing that, whether it was a line or not, this man had made her feel younger than she had in years. She lowered her chin and looked up at Frank through her lashes. “And I must say I like it.”

  Frank grinned. “Me too. And it usually works.”

  Maggie laughed. “You admit that it’s a line? How original.”

  “The line’s original, too,” he said. “And you’re the first woman who’s picked up on it so quickly.” He tried and almost succeeded in looking like a small boy with his hand in the cookie jar. It helped that he had medium brown hair naturally streaked with blond, wide blue eyes, and a fantastic mouth.

  They talked for an hour, then went to a nearby French restaurant and shared a sumptuous meal which included a bottle of fine Chardonnay and a glass of sweet, golden dessert wine. She learned that Frank was divorced, in town from Dallas for a week for his firm’s quarterly department meetings and that he was charming and sexy and determined to get her into his bed. As he dropped his credit card onto the check, he took Maggie’s hand. As he held it across the table, his index finger scratched little patterns in her palm. “We could be good together,” he purred.

  She had to admit to herself that she was turned on. But this was a man who had picked her up, not someone she worked with or who had been introduced to her by friends. He was only in town for a short time. She couldn’t even delude herself into thinking this was the beginning of a long-term relationship. But she wanted to go to bed with him nonetheless. “How can you be so sure?” she said.

  “I can be very sure. I can see it in your eyes, your body, the way you smile, the way you can’t quite sit still. You want this as much as I do. How do you like your sex?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. How do you like your sex? Long and slow, with lots of kissing and stroking? Hard and fast, like the pair of animals we are? Standing up with your back pressed against the wall and your legs locked around my waist? In the shower under torrents of hot water? Tell me and I’ll make it that way for you.”

  Maggie shrugged. She couldn’t tell him how she liked her sex because she loved it all ways. “You tell me,” she hedged. “How do you like it?”

  “Oh, Maggie, I think I’d like it every way with you.” He lifted her hand and nipped at her fingertips.

  “No,” she said, more seriously. “Tell me. How would you like to make love with me? Create the fantasy and let’s see how we mesh.”

  “You’re serious. You want me to tell you.” When Maggie merely nodded, Frank said, “I see you slowly removing your clothes while I watch. I watch you reveal your body to me, one small piece at a time.”

  Silently Maggie reached up and unbuttoned the top two buttons on her blouse and parted the sides so the valley between her breasts was visible.

  “Shit, baby. I’m hard as stone already.”

  Maggie raised an eyebrow but remained silent.

  “Okay. I see you in your bra and panties.” He looked around the tablecloth at Maggie’s shoes. “Yes. Black high heels. I like that. You’re not wearing pantyhose, are you?”

  “I won’t be,” she said, contemplating a quick trip to the ladies’ room. She watched the flush rise on Frank’s face. She was turning him on. What a trip.

  “You’re walking toward me, then unzipping my pants.”

  Maggie was very turned on and more than a little drunk. Without changing her expression, she slipped one foot out of her shoe and stretched her foot across the space between them and rested her stocking-covered toes against the swelling in his crotch.

  His startled look, followed by a shift of position to place her foot more firmly against his zipper, told Maggie exactly what she was doing to him. “Shit, baby, let’s get out of here,” he moaned.

  “The waiter hasn’t brought your credit card back,” Maggie said, feigning an innocent expression. She wiggled her toes in his lap. “As I remember, I was unzipping your pants. Tell me more. I want to know exactly how you see this evening we’re going to have.”

  She watched Frank take a deep breath. “I can’t think when you do that.”

  Again she silently raised an eyebrow. She was in charge now, quite deliberately turning Frank on, a man she had met only three hours before.

  His voice uneven, he continued. “You were unzipping my pants and taking out my cock. It’s so hard it sticks up like a flagpole. You’re wrapping your hand around it and licking your lips.”

  Maggie slowly ran the tip of her tongue across her upper lip. “Like this?”

  At that moment, the waiter returned with Frank’s charge slip, which he signed with an obviously shaking hand. As he wrote, Maggie moved her toes in his lap. As the waiter took the restaurant copy, Maggie asked, “Could I have just a bit more coffee?”

  “Certainly, madame.”

  “But, Maggie, I thought we were going to my room.” He was almost whining.

  “We will. But I need just a bit more coffee and you haven’t finished your story. I was holding your cock, as I recall. Squeezing it as it sticks up through the opening in your pants. Let’s see, I’m wearing a blac
k lace bra, bikini panties, and my high black shoes. Right?” Bob had taught her about the power of a well-set erotic scene and he had marveled at her ability to use words to turn him on. Now she was using all her skill to turn Frank on. And it was working better than she could have imagined.

  Frank was again lost in his fantasy. “Right,” he whispered.

  “And I’ll bet you want me to take your cock into my mouth and suck you.”

  “Oh, yes,” he groaned as the waiter refilled Maggie’s coffee cup. Without removing her hand from his, or her foot from his lap, she poured cream into her cup and stirred.

  When he didn’t continue, she said, “You want me to touch the tip of your cock with my lips, kiss it, lick it, make it wet.” She deliberately slowed the cadence of her speech. “Then I can slowly suck it into my mouth. Very slowly. Pulling it deeper and deeper into that hot, wet cave.”

  Frank’s eyes closed, obviously lost in the fantasy.

  “Now I pull back, but I keep sucking so your cock pulls out so slowly. Down and up, my mouth is driving you crazy.” She remembered a trick Bob had taught her. “But I wrap my fingers around the base of your cock so you can’t come as I keep on sucking. I don’t want you to come yet, baby.”

  “But I want to come.”

  “Not until we’re both ready. So now I pull my panties off and rub myself. I’m very wet, you know. I let you lick my finger so you can taste me. Do I taste good?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Good. Now I pull off your pants, but I leave your shirt on. It’s very sexy for me to see you all dressed in your business shirt and tie while I slowly put a cold, lubricated condom over your cock. It feels tight, like it’s hugging you. Now I push you down onto the bed, straddle your waist and use the tip of your slippery cock to play with myself.” She looked at his closed eyes. “Can you see me?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice harsh and almost inaudible.

  “Let me take off my bra so you can watch my breasts as I play with your cock. I’m rubbing my clit now. It’s hard and you can even feel it against your cock. And I’m so wet. Your hips are moving, trying to push your cock inside. Shall I let you?”