The Lingerie Catalog

First, unlike with Halloween, Valentine's Day has two markets that you better not try to mix. Kid Val's Day was already covered in card and party stores, and big-box seasonal aisles, because there doesn't have to be space for costumes. Adult Val's Day? There isn't much a popup can provide that isn't already available from the naughty-nightie chain stores. The dungeon stuff from Halloween was dragged in from the warehouses, but not enough people were interested in spending on romance that dark, 'Fifty Shades' notwithstanding.

Second, the internet has taken over nearly everything in the plain-brown-wrapper trade. Few people want to go in person to a sex-oriented retailer, and if they do, they go alone and hope not to be recognized.

Third, local ordinances can make it impossible to find locations for Adult-Val pop-ups that the public would accept.

No matter how far attitudes in America may have progressed, anger and violence don't disturb people nearly as much as passion and pleasure.

I got plenty of money from this gig, but my rep as a marketer took a hit. No more big scores came along, and by 2018 I was ready to retire early. Work no longer took me out of myself. With my children grown, and busy with their own families, the void in my soul was harder to ignore. I couldn't sell Ron Corbett very well, and I was tired of trying.

***

Now, though, I wasn't quite so tired, at least in glandular terms. I kept seeing LuAnn's message when I started up the laptop. I got close to deleting, and then let it stay. Like the catalog, it never made it to the recycling bin.

The void in my soul might always be there. But I was still a living, breathing human. A male one.

I wanted to spend time with women. Maybe just socially. Definitely not with someone vetted by Karen. I wanted the satisfaction of knowing I had made my own terrible choice.

I wouldn't have to sell Ron Corbett, just offer him.

But I had become lazy. I cringed at the thought of seeking out new people, learning about them, revealing myself to them. If I was going to spend the last few years of my life in misery, wouldn't it be easier with a known quantity?

Wow, what spectacular logic.

LuAnn, a known quantity, was reaching out, despite what I did to her in the hotel bar. She encouraged me to clear the air. What exactly did she mean by that?

The next time I picked up the catalog, I noticed that the glossy cover now had finger smudges. I winced at the sight, and concluded that I had hit bottom.

Okay, LuAnn, I thought, setting the catalog aside and reaching for the laptop. You're welcome to interrupt my downward spiral. Or join it.

***

LuAnn and Hal Fenton got engaged during senior year. A year after graduation, I got word of their wedding, on the grounds of Fenton's father's lake house, with a swarm of fraternity brothers and sorority sisters.

Myra and I had already gotten hitched at the county clerk's office.

In 2020, LuAnn still lived in a dream house built by Fenton money. So many Langdon alums had gravitated to the same city after graduation, Myra and I among them. We never had cause to frequent the upper crust part of town.

So, despite having lived within 20 miles for 40 years, LuAnn and I had only seen each other once during that time, back on campus. Until I drove up to her house the other night.

We had agreed to go to dinner, but when she opened the door she wasn't wearing a coat. Front hall lighting sent gleams from a silver dress with a deep neckline. "Hiiii! Come iiiin!" she said, with a big smile. She reached to give a one-arm hug as I entered. "Okay if we talk a little first?"

"Sure," I said, suddenly feeling trapped.

"You can leave your coat there, this won't take a minute." She flicked a hand towards a coat tree next to the door. I hung up my coat and warily followed her into an impeccable mid-century modern living room. With another hand flick she indicated a chair, and she sat on another chair, facing it.

I said "Okay, shoot," to my one-person firing squad.

She leaned forward and put a hand on my knee, making her cleavage even more dramatic. "Thanks so much for answering my message, it means a lot. I have, I guess, some questions about what happened that night."

"Okay," I said, allowing her to take the initiative.

"I was really mad at you for a long time. It was like you played some nasty practical joke. Was that it?"

"No, Lu. I was trying to make a point about the way you'd treated me. And, I figured, all other men."

She nodded. "I did start to think about that, after a few more..." she stopped, looking to one side. Then, "Anyway, we can go now. I just want to say that, I think you did me a big favor that night."

I tried not to crow. Just a smile, and "I'm glad to hear that."

We stood. I got my coat and helped her into hers, noticing that more pounds had found their way onto her. Fat had not yet moved into her face, however.

She said, "When you didn't take me up to my room, I even wondered what kind of man you are. So many men seem to have stopped hiding that sort of thing."

I responded only with a chuckle until we were in the car. Then I said, "Lu, if you had said, 'I'd like for us to have sex,' I would definitely have accompanied you to your room."

She seemed to bristle at that, but after a moment said, "That's fair."

We went to a steakhouse. Our catching-up conversation included her admission that the 'few more' were men who quickly lost patience with her attempts to be blameless for her libido.

As we were leaving, she asked, "Can we talk some more?"

"Sure. Where?"

She gathered her thick, stylish black coat around her, and brought up the high fur-trimmed collar. "Out there. A walk." She looked vulnerable. Unusual, for her.

It was a chilly February night, but without wind. After a few steps she said, "I had another reason to contact you."

"Are you lonely, Lu?"

She nodded. "If I can't fool anyone, why not go back to the first man who saw through me?" She was holding my arm, and squeezed it. "And you're still really cute, y'know."

"Had your eyes checked lately?" I was getting a little scared. But about what? I already knew she was fishing for me.

After a sigh, she said, "I'm no good at judging people, at understanding if they're lying. My only step forward, Ronnie, was that I learned that about myself. So now, if I meet some charming guy, I know there's a fifty-fifty chance that he doesn't care about me. And I've protected myself, even when I'm really lonely.

"When I was young, they wanted my body. Now, they want my money. You don't want money, do you, Ronnie?"

I didn't expect this to be thrown my way. "Uh, no, I'm okay." Then I tried to read her expression, which seemed neutral. I asked, "Are you?"

"Oh, yes, but it's in annuities and such. I don't have a mattress stuffed with cash to give to some gigolo."

"Good," I said. How did I feel about her now? Was I...receptive to her?

"My mother always said I could show it off a little, but not give it away." Her boots crunched on an ice patch. "It was tough, but it worked. And once I had Hal, I thought it would be forever. I let him undress me and take me. What else did there have to be?

"Hal had me get on the pill. He said he wasn't ready for kids, and we had plenty of time. After a few years, I wondered if he'd ever be ready.

"When I think back now on how I was then, I start to hate myself. It wasn't just that I felt safe, being out of circulation. I had unkind thoughts about anyone who got AIDS. I decided that they deserved it. I was smug. This was true even after I caught hints that Hal was cheating. Think of it, Ronnie. If even I was getting wise, how bad a liar and cheat was Hal?

"In 1987, I got the first look at one of our credit card statements. After a half-hour crying jag, I went and got tested for all those nasty things that came with sex. That night I confronted Hal, and that escalated into a screaming match. He kept insisting that a man has more physical needs than a woman does. I told him he could shove his needs up his, his rear end, because I'd never let him shove them up mine.

"Ronnie, I'd never talked that way. But I did that night.

"When my test came back clean, I decided that I'd probably used up all my good luck for the rest of my life. The divorce got me plenty of alimony, which was still common then, especially if the husband was stupid about things like credit cards.

"After that, five straight cute guys with nothing behind their smiles. I married two of them. When I got through those divorces, I was over 40, with a hint of a double chin and varicose veins. The money couldn't last forever. I could type, so I found work, and kept it when that changed from secretarial to data entry.

"And then, well, I heard about Myra..."

"Go on," I said quickly, brusquely.

"At the reunion, I really thought we could be good together. So, at the hotel...I was doing what I always did. I thought you'd come to me, and show you wanted me, by seducing me. But I was wrong. You could teach me your lesson, because you still loved Myra, and you knew that nobody else could love you the way she did."

I could have clammed up and nodded. But nobody had ever said that to me out loud. And I couldn't let LuAnn believe that it was true. I started shivering, and not from the cold.

There were things I had never said to anyone. If I said them to my kids, or any of the extended family, I would hurt people I truly did care about. Maybe it was safe to say them to LuAnn, because she might misunderstand, forget, or pay no attention.

I think I can only write about these things, now, because I said them to her, then.

"I'm sorry, Lu, I can't let that stand," I said. "Myra—"

I choked up, literally. I had to hack and wheeze for several seconds before I could get out, "Myra never loved me."

Her head snapped towards me. "What!?"

"She wanted me," I said. "And, you could say, there were things about me that she valued. But she didn't love Ron Corbett as a person, in any sense that I could think of as love."

LuAnn stopped, yanking me to a halt. She hissed, "How can you say such a thing? The way she used to look at you—"

"Because of what she wanted me to do for her," I said, fighting not to sob. "Having children mattered more to Myra than anything else. I didn't think about that when we got married. I was certainly willing to have kids. And I was thrilled by them, and being their father, and how happy Myra was to be a mother.

"It was only long after the kids were in our lives, that it began to get through to me that I was no longer in Myra's life. And with each passing year I came to wonder if I ever was in her life."

The look on LuAnn's face edged towards horror. "You're serious."

"I began yearning for moments when she would look at me not as the father of her children, but as her husband. There was still sex, while she wanted to keep breeding. But I couldn't see any love, or even affection, from her. And the more I saw this absence, the more I wanted that love. It never came.

"Once the kids were raised, I confronted her about this. She dismissed it, saying that adults shouldn't be needy, and all concern should be directed towards children—and, what she was now looking forward to, grandchildren. She said she couldn't understand why I didn't feel the same way. And she said flatly what I had come to suspect, that she had no interest in whatever I might feel towards her.

"I'd thought that, at least, she loved the kids. She was always pitch-perfect as their mother. But then I even started to wonder about that, especially when she tried to decide who the kids married. It was as if she saw her only purpose in life to be the spreading of the Barksdale-Corbett gene pool that she had created.

"The oldest grandchild was two when Myra was diagnosed. Myra's great sadness was that she wouldn't see them grow. And breed. She didn't want their memory of Grandma to be of something scary and pathetic in the hospital. And there was no sign of a thought about me. I guess she got her wish, because she was gone two weeks after the start of chemo.

"Lu, am I really so forgettable?" I burst out. "Okay, I ran pretty fast, and, and, I figured out how to make people buy things, so I'm not a great artist or, or any kind of genius. But am I really nothing more than a sperm bank?"

She might have had no idea what to say to that. Would anyone?

After a moment she said, "So all this time..."

I looked at her, aghast. "I never should have said that. I'm sorry, not your problem."

The door in the dark was now wide open. Should I shut it? Could I?

"Oh Ronnie," she said quietly. Her mouth worked silently for a while. Then she said, "I don't know what to say."

"Maybe we should get in out of the cold," I said quickly.

"Yes. All right."

She let me direct her towards the steakhouse parking lot. She didn't look at me during the walk back.

I drove to her place, expecting that this encounter would be our last. I must have come across as hopelessly fucked up, and LuAnn Murchison would surely want to find a more stable rock for her declining years.

My mouth opened, ready to thank her for listening and wish her well, but her hand closed gently on my coat sleeve, and she said, "Ronnie, can we talk again tomorrow?"

"Umm...sure. If you like." I was too confused to add, About what?

She answered that anyway. "I have a lot to think about. It was so nice of you to listen to me, and...and say what you said. I hope tomorrow I'll understand my, um, some things. Is that okay?"

I had no clue. But she again looked vulnerable.

"Yes." I found a smile for her. "Seven p.m.?"

Her smile was one of immense relief. "Yes, seven. Thank you!" She gave me a peck on the cheek and opened the car door with an energy I didn't understand.

***

No texts, no PMs, no IMs. I walked up to the door at seven, and knocked, with my knuckles on a slab of wood. In many respects, LuAnn and I were people of the previous century.

She opened at once. She was more dolled up but also more restrained. She buttoned her coat over a long-sleeved green dress with a moderate scoop neck, and there may have been salon work on her thick, sweeping blond curls, to make a nimbus around her head.

She beamed, and hugged me. Then she pulled back and said, "I've done all my thinking, Ronnie."

I smiled and said "Good," and bottled up any concern I might have about being involved in her...thinking?

"Can we go to that Mexican place you've mentioned in your posts? I don't think I can pronounce it."

"Jardin de Oaxaca," I said. And now I had to get Belinda out of my head.

But dinner went fine. The food was great, as always. And the person sitting across from me was enjoyable company. Not aloof. Not judgmental. Not making everything about her. Looking at me. As if I was somebody she wanted to be with.

The sight of her had an effect on my blood flow.

And I...kind of...flirted with her?

This didn't alter the words spoken by either of us, none of which I remember anyway. (They weren't nearly as freighted as the words from the previous night.) But her smiles got bigger, and her posture got more relaxed. With no alcohol passing our lips.

I was waiting for the check when, cocking an eyebrow, she footsied me.

And suddenly I was having fun. "Why, Ms. Murchison, whatever are you doing?"

"Playing with you," she said, and giggled. Ridiculously, and honestly.

She was sweet and silly, and if she was this way now because I had punked her in the hotel bar, I might have done some good in the world.

And, unburdening to her last night had done some good for me. What was going on in my heart and brain, together with my groin, seemed as exciting as it was alien.

The goofy mood carried over when we were in the car. Then she said, "Ronnie, I want to say yes to you."

I now had a definite boner, which might interfere with reasoned discussion. "About what?"

"We have to work that out. Can we go to your apartment?"

We sure could, and did. If she cared about the state of it, it didn't show.

I made coffee. My putz relaxed, but an underlying physical tension remained.

We sat on my old upholstered chairs, arranged as we had been in her living room the day before.

"I'm not the old me any more," said LuAnn, nervous but smiling. The old her might have bolted as soon as she looked inside my place.

Again I had my mouth open to say something, but she added, "I was scared tonight, Ronnie. Now I know how I feel, but I couldn't tell about you. Because of what you said. If there was anything in you but cold and dark. But you warmed up." With a giggle, she footsied me again.

My heart leapt. With joy? Whaaat?

"Lu," I said. "Are you ready to answer something?"

She almost jerked, sitting up straight. "I am."

Somehow I abandoned self-defense, cowardice, and better judgment. "Do you love me?"

"Yes," she whispered. Then, clear as a bell, "Yes!"

I...was...loved?

She vise-gripped my hand with hers. "You said we should be open, and honest, Ronnie. So...do you love me?"

I stared at her, flabbergasted. "I think...I'm going to love you, Lu." An awkward laugh escaped me. "Yes, yes I—no, wait. You're going to have to seduce me first."

She laughed, but then said, "No, seriously, the way I feel, you can't say you're going to, it has to be—"

"LuAnn Murchison," I said, taking her other hand in mine, "If what you want is a companion for the rest of your life, please choose me, and I will fill that role happily. And please forgive me, but I've gone so long without loving that I'm not sure I recognize it now."

She lunged forward, laughing, and squeezed me tight. "I choose you! And you can't back out!" She broke away and sat. "You have to take responsibility!" This may have been her upper limit for irony.

Astutely, she then said, "I know that was hard for you, Ronnie. And now, this is hard for me." She spread her arms. "Here, in your bachelor pad, I say 'yes' to whatever you're going to do to me."

"Bravo!" I shouted, and applauded her.

"I'd like to make you happy," she said, "but I don't know if I can."

I had to smile. "Lu, it's time to stop hiding behind words. You made me happy by playing footsie with me. That isn't what you mean, is it?"

She gave a little laugh, and looked more relaxed. "No it isn't. I mean being passionate."

"You're still hiding," I said, "but that's less likely to be misunderstood."

She looked towards her lap, mouth tightening. Then she said, "Ronnie, is this...something you still want?"

"Probably," I said, my smile crooked. "Say the rest of it, Lu."

Her eyes widened, as she realized that I knew what she was dancing towards. This might have made it easier for her to say this. "So you...still can?"

"I can perform as a lover. Not as well as I could forty years ago, or even ten. And I haven't had a partner in a long time. But I think I'd be up to the challenge."

"We'd have to, you know..." She whispered, "Vaseline."

I hoped she wouldn't think I was making fun of her (which I was, a little). "There are plenty of things better than that, Lu. You might like them."

In a low murmur: "I used to worry about, mm, my panties. It's actually been nice lately, that this doesn't happen now."

"I'm sure everything will be fine."

"Can we have music?"

"Sure. Anything in particular?"

She looked like she didn't want to look excited. "I used to like Johnny Mathis."

"That can be arranged."

***

She wouldn't go to the drugstore with me, because I'd be buying sex lube and that was something she didn't want to be associated with in public. If this sort of thing happened all the time, it might get on my nerves, two-way love or not. I focused on being nice, however. I sat her down at the laptop, and showed her how to use the music streamer. Just get through the night, I told myself. Maybe the love (Whaaaat?) would continue, and maybe she'd loosen up.