Encounter by Will Mayo

"When the whole world's naked, who gives a damn?" he thought as she stood there in the moonlight. She was about as good as any other whore he'd seen - ample breasts, fair hair stretching to her shoulders, nice rump, well curved, by the windowsill; nice eyes, too (gems in sad silver, those). Little bit down about the mouth, but good.

Problem was, he figured, she was good, yet she was same. Same as every pictorial he'd seen in Playboyor Hustler or any one of a thousand other magazines. Time was, you’d fantasized about it enough. It got to be old. Whether the girl (or lady, if you prefer - he took himself to be a Southern gentleman) was black, white, or Korean; you'd seen them all. The satisfaction was something to lie down with, never something to last a while.

Not that he hadn't tried. He'd built up the momentum, time and time again. Fantasies that'd make him a rich man if he’d had a dime for every ointment. Days, weeks he'd spend building up the reservoir of cash from his job at the lumber mill; nights spent, cold cream in hand, thinking about the lady of his dreams.

She was tall, willowy like the river's edge, moving deli­cately among the high grass. Long hair surmounted her shoul­der (hair that seemed to change color with every drift of the wind). Eyes like quicksilver. The lady moved slowly among waving weeds, spoke in whispers of nights to come, of gentle waves he'd visited on a beach with a precious momma. Moved toward his arms, her nude caresses, waiting, waiting...

...Then vanished. Vanished with the dawn, with the alarm and the smell of sticky morn. He'd rise with the setting moon, momentarily putting his passion in check, as he set forth for the day's sweat. The dream near forgotten in the hum and clang of countless machinery.

Always, though, it'd remain at the back of his head; a memory that had never occurred, but like somehow a Future History, similar to the cover of a pulp novel he'd seen on a bus somewhere.

He'd go on the church socials, flowers in hand, never daring to kiss, in a public life he'd sworn to keep sepa­rate from the whores. The aisles would light up, hymns would be sung, and then afterwards, dancing (widely spaced) and bingo. He knew now the names of every girl who'd ever whispered to him. Marjorie, Georgia, Thelma Lee. Names that tended to settle in the deep Southern sediment of his mind.

Once, he'd tended toward asking one of them out (Marjorie, of course...a name like marigolds, hair that waved in strands like the wind), but propriety, as always, stopped him. Words that formed in the mind fumbled their way to the heart and then never quite found their way to his open mouth. An occasion, this was, he'd never quite gotten over. Since then, ten years had passed. Ten years of sitting quietly on the dance room floor, waiting for his momma to come back from the grave. And years, too, spent visiting Aunt Emily's whorehouse, a nursery spawned of devilish angels.

In all that time, he'd never spoken to any of the ladies therein. It seemed, on one hand, improper; while, on the other hand, he was too busy living up to his expectations. He'd sit there starry eyed, as Emily, in her widely oval dress and hat, showed off the features of each girl, while giving, also, the names under which they would enact the performance. Bridgette. Tara. Naomi. Aphrodite. Always the names would change, while the bodies blurred in a mist of lost understanding.

Each would have a different tale to tell, a different act to perform. All in unspoken grunts and yells and count­less turmoils of the flesh under which he and they la­bored, if only for a moment.

Later, just as he'd be getting ready to speak, of something besides the yells of passion and the foils ofPlayboy, something would grab his lips and hold him quiet. It might be the syringe holes in legs, arms, and throat, left over after a quick fix from Dark Root Alley. Or it might be a blue dragon emblazoned upon the woman's bare buttock. Something, which always scared him, brought fear to mind, and left him to scurry, witless, away for another month.

The fear remained of the terrible sights, lingered on in silent confessionals, and twisted its root deep within his branch. But, always, too, the high expectation that he might find the lady of the high grass within Aunt Emil­y's whorehouse. That the changeable hair, the quick­silver eyes might take him over at any moment, become his compan­ion for more than a lifetime.

Now, as the girl, Tamara Lee by name, mounted him gently in the light from Aunt Emily's window, he began to reas­sess his position about the woman in front of him. She had hair that was tinted in strands of red, brown, and gold; that glowed in the moonlight. Eyes that flashed. Hands that moved quickly, softly in caresses that no other had achieved. Mouth, lips that whispered in innumerable tongues about more than mere breaths.

Soon, spent, they lay beside each other on the bed. And after a few lingering sighs (scant seconds it would seem later in memory), he was surprised to see that she, not he, had the courage to speak.

"Have you ever been in love?" she asked. "I mean, real­ly, fallen in love with someone you cared for? Something more than just the moment?"

He gazed beyond her now, at the clock on the far wall, ticking toward dawn. Toward the hours of lumbermen and evenings of church socials. Toward years ahead, waiting. Just waiting.

"Not so terribly many moments ago," he said in a voice that sounded older than the boy who'd grieved too long. Older still than the silent man in the confessional. A scared voice.

"And then what?" she asked in a voice that was the voice of a woman that longed to be free of the whorehouse, from Aunt Emily's quick hand.

He looked carefully at her face, at her drawn cheeks and hollow eyes. Not a face like the lady he'd dreamed of. Not quite of the junkies and whores he'd visited in the past. A bit more courage, perhaps.

"And nothing."