David Richards was not a man who came home early. Most nights he was at the office until 9 PM. Tonight, however, he decided his network integration business could suffer to let him go home at 8. After all, all the other offices were dark a full two hours before, and the storm outside promised to be a real dilly. The radio had said that flash-flood warnings were in effect, and he decided that he’d rather pull his BMW Z3 into his driveway an hour early rather than run it off the road on time. So he’d closed the folders on his desk, pushed them into a side drawer, locked the desk and his office, and left one hour early for the first time in well over two years.

As he drove now in the slowing drizzle, his thoughts drifted again to Emma. Before Emma died, he had it all. He never stayed at the office past 5:30. That, he explained to Emma, was why God created managers, accountants, and secretaries. After Emma died, he seemed to have lost his reason for going home. Even now, his house seemed larger and emptier every day. Emma had said, “Some day, David, some day this house won’t seem so large, because it will be full of the sounds of spoiled little children.”

Now the house seemed enormous. David was a meticulous man, who never let anything fall out of place. In the two years after Emma’s death, he’d fallen into a pattern of not visiting the rooms he never used. Consequently most of the rooms were dark and cold as the empty recesses of his heart. He had a maid service come in once a month to clean the house from top to bottom. He once toyed with the idea of hiring a cook, but instead opted to eat a hearty lunch out and skip dinner altogether. He kept beer in his refrigerator and wine in his cellar, and if he had guests he’d have a caterer make some food. He’d fallen into this routine and now it seemed old and gray, but familiar and cozy all the same. David was not an unhappy man, but Emma’s death had left a hollow pain in him that had never quite gone away.

The rain started picking up again and David turned his wipers on full. In the sharp stab of headlight he could make out a figure on the side of the road with its arm out. He never hesitated as he slowly applied the brakes and pulled to the side. He though only of this other human being’s discomfort and how much he wanted just a little company for even a short while. After all, his house was a mere five miles away now, and he thought how he’d like to give someone a hand and give himself a companion for at least those five miles.

The girl opened the door but did not get inside at first, eyeing the black leather seats. She looked at David, and he smiled and said “Come on, you’re not getting any drier.” She slid into the seat then and closed the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

She gave him a coy look and said, “Where do you want to go?”

At first he was unsure he heard her right. So he asked again, “No, I mean, where do you want to go?”

She smiled and said, “Are you a cop?”

His smile faded. Suddenly he looked her over. Yes, she was wet, and that didn’t help her appearance any. But he hadn’t noticed the tight shirt, the way-too-short skirt, the black mascara around her eyes, the wetness of the lipstick. He noticed she was clutching a small purse as if she would die without it. He looked at her face again and noticed that her smile was quite fake. She had a nice mouth, and she might even be attractive. But now, knowing what she was, she seemed vile to him.

“No, I’m not a cop. I think I made a mistake.”

“Ok then.” She said it so simply, then opened the door and was out of the car before he could think about what to say. He was searching for some apology, but it got stuck somewhere deep in his throat. He looked down the road as she began to walk away.

What is my life becoming? He thought. He thought of Emma, and he thought of his empty stomach, and he thought of his empty house, and he thought of his empty heart. What he wanted, maybe this girl couldn’t give him. What he needed was not physical. But maybe this girl could give him something he did need…someone to talk to, someone to share a piece of his life with. It seemed silly, and his heart began to pound when he found his hand pressing on the horn. His pulse quickened when she turned and walked back to the car. She opened the door and slid in without hesitation this time.

“Change your mind?”

“Yes. I mean no. I mean, that’s not what I want, but I will pay you. How much would you charge me for a night?”

“Wow, the whole night? Huh.”

“I’m not saying that I’d…I mean, just hypothetically. Did you ever charge a man for the whole night?”

“Not really. Mostly I do blow jobs and hand jobs, sometimes I fuck a guy. But if I did go with one guy for the night, I guess I’d have to charge him as much as I’d make in a night.”

“Well, how much to you make?”

She thought about it for a second, then said “About two-fifty.”

She’s lying, he thought, then thought Oh yes, like I should be so scrupulous. “Fine, then I’ll give you five hundred dollars for the night,” he said.

Her eyes widened a bit, but not so that she’d give the impression of being stunned. He thought to himself that she was fairly cool. She looked at his suit, then at the dashboard of the car, felt the leather of the seat.

“You don’t strike me as a psycho, so I’ll go along. Okay then, five hundred dollars, and I’m yours for the night. We can do whatever you want.” She settled back in the seat and relaxed a little. Then she sat up and placed her hand on his, and said in the tone of voice a mother would use on her child, “I have to tell you, though, nothing, and I mean nothing, goes in my ass. As long as we’re clear on that, anything else goes.”

He nodded and smiled, then slipped the car into gear and pulled into the road.

“So what’s your name?” he said.

“Cherry.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and his lip turned up in a smirk. She saw it and blushed. “Heather. Heather Banks.”

“Well, Heather Banks,” he said, “I’m pleased to meet you. My name is David Richards.”

They were quiet then. For the next two miles neither of them spoke, or took their eyes off the road. He could feel her relax as the road unwound before them; with every dash in the road she seemed to loosen a little more.

“Where do you live, David Richards?” He liked the way she said his name, almost condescending, almost reverently, somewhere in between. He smiled.

“Another three miles or so. I live back in the woods.”

“I bet you live in a big house, huh?”

“Yeah, I suppose it is pretty big. Too damn big, really.”

“So what, is your wife away or something?” He didn’t answer. “Hey, it’s cool, you know, lots of guys have wives, but sometimes they need something they can’t get from their wives. Believe me, I have no problem with some guy cheating on his -“

“I’m not…” He checked his tone of voice and relaxed his hands a little on the wheel. “I’m not cheating on my wife. My wife died two years ago. Two years and four months ago.”

She was quiet for a while. He felt bad, like he’d just embarrassed her and he wished he could think of something to say. Finally, she broke the silence. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She thought for a second then continued. “You have to understand, most of the guys I deal with are pigs. They have no morals.”

“Oh? Are we making moral judgements?”

“Well,” she said, “it’s like this. You have a job. I have a job. We both perform a service for society, yeah? You make people feel good. I make people feel good. That’s the goal of any service sector, to make the customer happy. Now, I’m sure that you make judgements on the way your customers handle their equipment when you’re not working on it. And I’d be willing to bet that you break your own rules from time to time too, yeah?”

“Okay. That’s a fair analogy.” He was thinking to himself, What is it about this girl? What the hell is her deal? He stuffed the thought away, but said, “You have an interesting way of looking at things. You’re pretty sharp.”

“You mean, I’m pretty sharp for a whore.”

“You’re pretty sharp for anyone.”

They rode in silence then. He turned off of the main road onto a smaller road, dark and apparently devoid of houses. Half a mile down the road he turned onto a small driveway and pulled up to a gate. He rolled down the window and tapped some keys on a keypad mounted on a pole, and the gate opened slowly. He waited a few seconds, then pulled through the gate and down the driveway, two hundred yards to the large Tudor-style house. He touched a garage door opener on his visor and pulled the Z3 into the garage.

“Well, here we are.”

Her eyes were wide and her mouth formed the beginnings of so many words she could not push out. She opened the car door and stepped out slowly, forgetting about her wet clothes, forgetting about her damp skin and how her hair stuck to her face. She felt as if she were floating. She turned to look at him as he stepped lightly up a few steps to the door and pushed a button to close the garage door.

“Nice house,” was all she could say.

He laughed. “Well, come inside and see what you think then.”

She walked up to the landing and looked back at the car. “Your car is deep blue,” she said.

He looked at her with a quizzical look. She saw the look and explained, “In the dark, in the rain, it looked black to me. I thought it was black, but it’s blue. That’s all.” She smiled.

He smiled back at her. “Come on, I’ll show you around. And, uh…” He looked again at her wet clothes. “I think…you look like you’re about my wife’s size. Her clothes are still upstairs. I’m sure she won’t mind.”

He led her into the house. He first showed her the rooms that he still used, the living room, the den, the kitchen. He showed her, too, the recreation room, the finished basement, the Jacuzzi and the sauna; and upstairs, the three bedrooms, the enormous master bathroom. She took it all in quietly, and made no comment at all until he showed her Emma’s walk-in closet.

“Tell you what,” he said, “Go take a shower, I bet you’d feel a lot better. Then pick out anything you like in the closet. You can keep it, along with the five hundred dollars.”

She shook her head as if awaking from a dream. He hadn’t mentioned the money since the first offer, and now it seemed obscene that he should mention it again. But that’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? she thought. I can’t forget that.

“Are you okay with that?” he asked. She nodded. “Good, you know where the bathroom is. You hungry?” She thought a minute, then shook her head. “Me either. I could go for a good cup of coffee, though. You?” She shrugged. Come on, Heather she thought, snap out of it. Say something.

“You know,” she finally managed, “Coffee sounds so good right now.” She smiled and brushed his cheek with the palm of her hand as she walked past him and disappeared into the bathroom.

The shower was wonderful. Heather lost all sense of time standing in the middle of three jets of water. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the steam rising off her body, encircling her in total comfort. She stood in the shower a full ten minutes before she bothered even looking for the soap and the shampoo. The whole time she stood perfectly still, head back, eyes closed, she thought to herself, What are you doing? At first, the thought of making five hundred dollars for a single night of some small talk, maybe a good fuck or maybe not, made her giddy. Most nights she was lucky if she made a buck-twenty. For a moment or two she toyed with the idea of pushing her luck a bit and asking for a bit more. She bit her lip, though. Five hundred dollars, one night, a decent outfit even. And this shower. She smiled broadly and rinsed the soap off of her body.

When was the last good shower? She closed her eyes and thought of the last day she spent at her father’s house, two months after her mother picked up and left. He staggered drunk into the bathroom while she was showering. He had ripped open the shower curtain with his pants around his ankles, and began groping her wet young body. She was too shocked to move at first, but when she caught a glimpse of her father’s erect penis, she screamed and pushed him away as hard as she could. She slipped a little but caught herself. Her father fell backwards and smashed his head on the mirror over the sink, and fell to the floor in a heap. She ran out of the bathroom with the shower still running, put clean clothes on her still-wet body, threw some more clothes in a trash bag, ran out of the house and never looked back.

The last good shower, she thought, was the one before that, when she came out of the bathroom in total relaxation, when she found her father drunk on the couch crying. She slipped her arm around his shoulders and he sobbed, I miss her, Heather, I’m so damn lonely. She still loved her father then.

When she finally turned the jets off and stepped out of the shower, the bathroom was choked with steam. She found the switch for the vent and turned it on. The steam cleared surprisingly fast. She padded over to the mirror over the sink and smeared the condensation with her wet hand. She looked at herself in the mirror for a minute, then began to dry herself, drawing the thick towel over her slender body as if in a dream.

David sat on the overstuffed couch in the living room sipping coffee and listening to the sound of the shower.

“Emma,” he said out loud. “Emma, what am I doing?”

He took a sip of his coffee and sat quietly listening to the water flow. He looked up at the ceiling and squinted.

“I’m just so damn lonely, Emma. She could have been anyone. I miss you so damn much.” He listened to the water again. “If you want me to stop this, I will. I’m not going to have sex with her, I just want some female company for a while.” He looked at the steaming cup of coffee in his hand and chuckled. “You probably wouldn’t have cared even if I brought her home while you were alive, babe. You’d have made her feel as at home as I’ve been trying to do. You’d even have offered her some clothes.” He took another sip and chuckled again. “You’d have been pissed about the five hundred, though.”

Speaking of the money again made him uncomfortable. He stood up and crossed the living room to the large bay window and looked out at the rain coming down in a soft sprinkle. In the floodlights it looked almost like snow. It made him think of winter, and the last winter of Emma’s life, when she left the house and never came home, when the police rang him at his office and told him of the accident, when he nearly drove off the road in his rush to get to the hospital, when he got lost in the sterile corridors looking for the morgue, when he had to turn his face and say, yes, that’s her. He only saw her for a second, but that second was an eternity, an image he could never shake. It had snowed the day she died. It had snowed the day of her funeral. It seemed like it snowed every day that year after she died. He shook his head at his reflection in the window.

“I’ll always love you, Emma. You know I will.”

Heather came downstairs in a flow of red silk and lace. David looked startled when he saw her in the dress. She stopped where she was. “You said anything in the closet. I thought I would look nice in this. Is this okay?”

He smiled. “Definitely okay. You look terrific.”

Now it was her turn to smile, and blush. “I feel so out of place.”

“You’re fine.”

They stood looking at each other for a few moments. Finally he said to her, “Would you like that coffee now?”

“Sure,” she said quietly.

He turned and walked toward the kitchen, and she followed. He crossed over to the Krupps coffeepot and poured the coffee into a clean cup and the one he had been drinking from before.

“Cream and sugar?”

She shook her head No, and he smiled. “That’s how I like it too.” He offered the cup to her, then took the other and walked casually into the living room. She followed him. They settled on the couch together and he sat gazing at her, unable to take his eyes off of her and the dress she wore. She began to feel very exposed. He saw it in her face and looked away.

“You know, this is called the ‘living’ room, but I sure haven’t been doing much living in here.” His voice sounded distant and detached, and she could hear an edge of pain in it.

“How…” she began, then almost stopped, then gathered her resolve and again started, “How did she die?”

He turned to look at her, not knowing whether he wanted to discuss it with her or not. Finally he sighed and looked away again.

“She was in a bad accident. Her car was a mangled mess, and they told me that she was dead when they arrived.”

“God, that sucks.” He turned to look at her. “I mean, it’s not even like she was sick or anything. It just happened, and you weren’t expecting it. When my grandmother died, she had been in the hospital for a month, and she was so sick and in so much pain. I prayed every day that God would take her and when He did, I thanked him for ending her suffering.”

“You believe in God?”

His question stopped her short, like a slap in the face. “What, you think just because I sell my body that I don’t believe in God? I believe. I believe in a loving, caring God who understands why I do what I do, and one who forgives my sins. If I didn’t believe in God, how empty my life would seem.”

He looked at her for a while, then turned away. “I’m not sure what I believe. Some day’s I think how wonderful it will be when I’m reunited with Emma, and we can spend eternity together. Some days I lament that I will never see her again, that she’s gone and that’s it. Sometimes the thought that my death will be the absolute end of my consciousness frightens the hell out of me. I lose sleep over it. And some days I believe that my consciousness is too strong to end with the life of my body.” He took a sip from his cup. “Thoughts of death consume my life.” He looked at her again. “I didn’t mean to question your beliefs or your morality. I just wanted to know if you believed in God.”

She looked at him for a while. His face was very handsome, and his eyes were like sharp steel, hard and steady on her face.

“Her name was Emma?” He smiled, and nodded. “That’s a pretty name. I always wished my name was pretty like that, you know, like Emma or Sara or Felicity or Portia. Something snotty and English, you know?”

“Heather is a very pretty name. Emma’s favorite flower was the heather. She wanted to name our daughter Heather. We had wanted children…” His voice drifted off and his eyes fell a little. Then he brightened back up and asked “Do you know that different color heather means different things?” She looked a little surprised and shook her head. “There’s basically two kinds, white and lavender. The lavender is more common, and means admiration and solitude.”

She laughed and shook her head. “That second part is me, for sure!”

He smiled and continued. “The white heather is less common and means protection, and that your wishes will come true.”

She shook her head again. “Wow. I never knew all of that. I’m liking my name more and more.”

“Better than ‘Cherry?’”

She laughed. “I guess it’s kind of schmaltzy, that name. I don’t know, most guys could give a shit what my name is. I thought of Cherry a while back, because I’m young and some guys like to think they’re fucking a virgin. You know, like subliminal advertising. Not that it matters. Once they’ve decided that I’m the one they’re gonna drop a twenty on, it pretty much doesn’t make any difference.”

“I hope you don’t mind my asking, but how old are you anyway?”

“Um…” She thought about lying for a minute, then decided against it. “Seventeen.”

“God. How long have you been doing this?”

“Since I…since I left home. Last year.”

“Do your parents know where you are or what you do?”

“Hell no, and I doubt they care where I am, and they probably wouldn’t care if they did know.”

He looked at her and was going to ask why, then thought better of it. He decided to back the conversation up a bit.

“So, do you enjoy what you do? I mean, do you do it just to do it or do you like any of it at all?”

“That’s a strange question. I don’t know if I should be offended or touched that you should even care.”

“Well, I guess I care. I mean, at first I was a little taken aback to find that you were…but then after we’d been talking, I found that there was more to you than just what you are on the surface, and now I really do care. You seem like a sweet girl. But you seem like you bear a lot of pain.”

“Well, what the hell would you know about it?” Now she was offended.

“I’ll have you know that I know an awful lot about pain, thank you very much.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Um…yeah, I guess you do. Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made assumptions.”

They were quiet then for a while, listening to the soft drizzle outside, thinking of what to say next. She spoke first.

“I enjoy some of it. What I hate is when guys think that just because they plunk down twenty bucks that they can do anything to me. I’m not like that. I’ll do what I have to do, but I won’t do everything. I’ve gotten beat up, but I guess that’s just one of those on-the-job risks. Everybody has those. Even you. I mean, you might burn your hand on the coffeepot at the office or something. You might get a sliver from a pencil in your finger. You could get a paper cut. So it’s like that with me. I could get beat up.”

“Don’t you carry protection?”

“Mace is good, but a lot of times I get punched in the face before I can get it out. It’s funny how guys would do to me what they wouldn’t dream of doing to a so-called respectable woman. It almost destroys my faith in men in general. But then, I have to remember who I am and what my place is. If they were dating me instead of paying for sex, they would probably treat me differently. But it does bother me that they’d have that side to them at all. What, do they just hold it in when it’s not appropriate, then take it all out on me? That sucks.”

“Well, you haven’t told me anything you enjoy about it.”

She thought for a minute. “I like giving head. I don’t know why, I just do. Something about oral sex gets me off. I mean, not physically, but it gets me really wound up. I do about five blowjobs for each guy who actually wants to fuck. And when that guy does come along, I usually come about three times before he does. It helps to keep me wet. Oh, I bite my lip and never let them know I come. It’s not part of my job to enjoy it. But after giving head about five times, I’m so ready to come, I’m there in a couple of strokes.”

He cleared his throat and shifted his position on the couch. She smiled and inched a little closer. “I’m sorry, did I touch a nerve?”

“Please,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t invite you here for sex.”

“No,” she said. “You just wanted the whore to give you a hug.”

He cleared his throat again. She could see the bulge in his pants, and almost felt bad for doing that to him. Then he spoke, and his words were like an electric shock in her nether-regions.

“I’m like that too. I love to go down on a woman. I love it all, the smell, the taste, the softness of her skin, the feeling I get in bringing her off…”

“Oh, God,” she breathed. Her chest felt shallow and hollow, and her eyes were wide.

They sat looking at each other for several minutes, both afraid to speak that which they knew they wanted to say. She broke the silence finally with cracking voice:

“When was the last time you…”

She let the unfinished question hang in the air. He looked away for a second, then back at her. “Emma was the last woman I was with. I haven’t even dated since she died. I just haven’t felt like it, I guess.” He stopped for a minute. “No, that isn’t even it. I guess I felt that if I did date other women, or slept with them, that I’d be cheating on her in some way. I mean, I realize she’s dead. I’m a widower. I certainly wouldn’t be the first man who lost a wife and found another woman to spend his life with. It’s just that…it’s just…” He stopped again, collecting his thoughts. She sat stoically, waiting for him to finish. She’d already forgotten that she had wanted him so badly only a few minutes before. In her eyes was a certain kindness and understanding that helped him to continue. He smiled and felt a warm glow all over his body.

“I met Emma in college. I was an engineering student then, and she was a journalism major. I remember the day I met her. I was in the student common, reading The Fountainhead. I used to think that it was required reading for engineers of any sort, but it’s a much deeper book than that.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve read it.” She laughed at the look of incredulity on his face. “Hey, like you said, there’s a lot more to me than what’s on the surface.”

He smiled and shook his head. “So there I was, reading The Fountainhead, and I looked at my watch and realized I was late for my Calculus class. I got up and turned toward the door so fast that I ran straight into Emma and knocked her down. Oh, God, I felt so embarrassed! But she smiled at me from the floor…and right then in that moment, I knew it. I knew that I would marry her. I knew that she was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I asked her to marry me that night. Got down on one knee, the whole thing. Gave her a ring I’d gotten from a bubble-gum machine. And even though it was that sudden, even though we’d known each other only hours, she never hesitated to say ‘Yes.’ Against the wishes of our parents, we married that summer, just a few months later.

“I was so happy with Emma. Every day with her was incredible. And we didn’t even have to do anything, go anywhere, even say anything. Just being in each other’s company was enough. We spent many long nights sitting right here, just staring into each other’s eyes, saying nothing. When we talked, we spoke so gaily of things in our lives. Every marriage has hardships in the beginning, financial hardships and the like. We had those at first, but even when we talked about our budget or the bills or anything, we never fought, we never felt stress. Together, we could do anything, face anything, and we knew it. We loved each other as only true soul-mates could.”

She was enraptured by his words, and felt a longing. She felt a closeness with him that she never felt with anyone else. She leaned over and kissed him softly on the cheek, and felt an elation that he did not pull back, or show any revulsion, as she had expected. Instead he smiled a warm smile and touched his cheek gingerly, as if any sudden movement might wipe the kiss from his cheek.

“Maybe,” she offered, “maybe you were true soul-mates. I mean, did you ever read Plato’s Symposium? He wrote about a myth that explained soul mates, that they were actually parts of the same being. Like, thousands of years ago, the gods broke people apart and that people were always looking for their other half. I think that there’s at least one person out there for each and every one of us.”

“Well, Plato also wrote that the only true love is the love between a man and a boy.”

“Forget that, that was ancient Greek society. But I’m thinking, like, maybe since there are now some six billion people on this planet, and there are more men than women, that occasionally there’s someone who is destined for more than one person. And that’s why people die, to make room for the other person.”

“That’s shit!” He stood, enraged. “If that were true, then my dear Emma died for what? So that I could be with another who was so wonderful? There was no one I ever loved more, and there can be no one I will ever love even half as much!”

She never cringed at his tone nor shrank from his rage. Her posture softened his resolve and he sat again, wishing he could remove the words from the air and pretend he never said them. He didn’t look at her, but instead stared off into space shaking his head. She reached over slowly and took his hand.

“I didn’t mean anything. I would never insult you or tarnish your memory of your wife, not intentionally. I…” She stopped before she could commit herself to the unspoken thought and pursed her lips, waiting for a response from him.

It would be some minutes before she heard from him again, and then she felt his grip tighten on her hand, gentle but firm. “What made me so mad was not what you said, but what I’ve been feeling. I feel…I don’t know what I feel.” He turned to look at her. “But you’re the first woman who ever made me consider being unfaithful to Emma.” She blushed and turned her eyes, but he touched her chin with his finger and brought her face around toward his. He sat looking into her eyes, and then he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.

“I miss her, Heather. I’m so damn lonely.”

She pulled back away from him, and stood jerkily, as a newborn fawn on shaky legs. “You know, it’s late. If you have work in the morning you’d better go to bed.” He stood with a look of inquisitive shock. She lowered her gaze and said, “But of course, you’re paying for the whole night, so I guess that’s up to you.”

Those last words pierced him, and he stepped back slightly, then straightened. “Heather, my white Heather, my protection, my wish come true. I feel as I did that day I first met my beloved Emma, and I knew then what I know now, that I…I want you to stay with me. I want you to be mine forever. You’ve given me so much more than I could ever pay for.”

“Then I take it back. This isn’t how this was supposed to go. You pay me five hundred bucks for a night. Now, if you want to have sex, fine, then let’s go. If you want to talk, let’s do that. But you never said anything about forever, damn it.”

“I never thought I’d marry either until I met…”

“Yes, your dearest Emma. Maybe I don’t want to live in her shadow, did you ever consider that? Maybe I don’t want to be the one she died to let you be with. Maybe I just want to go back to doing what I was doing and let you go back to what you were doing.”

He stood silently, motionlessly. She took another step back to increase the distance between them. Then he spoke again.

“If that’s all that tonight was for you, a trick…” She cringed at the last word, but stood her ground. “If all you want right now is your five hundred bucks, well, maybe I’ve got another option. Follow me.”

He turned and strode from the room. She followed, wondering if they were going to the bedroom, wondering what he was thinking. But instead of the bedroom, he led her to an office with shelves of books and a large mahogany desk with a green banker’s lamp on it. He motioned to her to sit in one of the leather chairs in front of the desk, then took a seat in the leather chair behind it. She sat slowly, carefully. He fumbled with something behind the desk, then sat up and placed something on the desk. It was a small pile of cash, but it looked enormous.

“Is that five hundred dollars?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “It’s a test. This, my dear Heather, is fifteen thousand dollars in cash.”

She felt as if her heart had stopped. “Um, and you keep that much cash in the house…why?”

“I’ve kept this here since Emma was alive. You see, in the beginning we had nothing. And when we had something, I liked to have some cash around just in case we wanted to do something impulsive, like fly to Europe for the weekend. I’ve never liked credit cards, although I have them for my business.” He paused. “Here’s my proposition. You may want to take some time to consider it.”

He sat forward, and paused for the effect. She sat still, waiting, purposely looking him in the eye to keep herself from looking at the stack of money in the middle of his desk.

“You make me feel things I’ve never felt. Not things that I haven’t felt since Emma was alive, but things I’ve never, never felt. If the money is all you still want from tonight, then here it is. Not five hundred, but fifteen thousand dollars. I know that’s a lot of money for you and it’s quite a sum for me as well, but to me it means nothing. Less than nothing. Here’s your choice. You may sleep on the couch tonight, and in the morning come to me, pledge your love for me, say the things I know you really want to say. Be with me forever. Then tonight is not about the money, it’s about us. It’s about you and me.”

There was wanting in his voice. The wanting disappeared when he spoke again.

“Or, if you like, tonight can be all about money. It is your job, and that’s all. Just another guy willing to pay to get fucked. Ok, that’s fine. Then you take this money, all of it…” His gaze hardened. “And I never want to see you again, ever.”

She sat back suddenly and felt her face flush. He softened his face just a bit. “It’s nothing personal. I just could never stand to see you again if you don’t feel the way I do. And I want you to understand this, that I love you. And if you leave, it would be too painful to ever look at you again.”

He stood, and walked to the office door. He turned and looked at her, sitting in the chair looking straight ahead and still not looking at the money.

“Goodnight Heather.”

He turned and went upstairs. It was the longest walk of his life.

He awakened just before daybreak to see her standing next to the bed. She was completely undressed. The moonlight through the window shone on her body, making her skin appear as marble, like the Venus de Milo with arms. She pulled back the sheets and climbed into bed with him, touching him, kissing him, feeling his body over her.

When he entered her, they both cried out.

In the morning he awoke, and she was gone. On the desk where the money had been was a note. It read:

“Lavender Heather. Admiration. Solitude.”

Three months later he was driving his Z3 down the same road he had driven that night when he saw her again. She was standing on the side of the road with her thumb out. She was dressed as she had been dressed the night he first saw her, the night he picked her up.

Their eyes met for an instant. Then he turned to look back at the road.

His foot never left the accelerator.

The End