7/11/10

The Session
By Felicia Aguilar


The roses sat still and sad on the windowsill. They were already beginning to wither, and several petals had taken the plunge into the sink perched beneath. Soon they would only be mementos of a stolen Sunday with a man just as sad.

There was a nervous redness in his cheeks when her client came in to see her. He had a boyish smile, playful and shy. "I'm not sure why I bought them," he said, motioning towards the flowers. "They were beautiful, and so I thought a beautiful woman might want them."

Others weren't so nice when they walked in, ready to rip off their jackets and ties and get to the awful business.

"Thank you," she said. "You can have a seat, if you’d like."

Their session started with the usual banter. She had heard all the excuses and justifications for their behavior. For some, it wasn’t easy to get to this point. It took a lot of courage to walk into the room. For others, it was an everyday occurrence, something that was needed in order to make it through the week. The man sitting in front of her seemed just like the rest of them.

“So, tell me why you’re here.”

"Well, I've been married nearly thirty years." He was seated at the edge of the uncomfortable leather chair in the corner. After relaxing his tie, he began to rub his face in small circular motions. Though he was an older gentleman, he seemed aged beyond his years. She couldn't quite guess his age. Fifty-five, maybe sixty?

"What's your wife's name?"

"Cathy. Her full name is Catherine Alexandria.” He looked up, smiling. “It sounds like a queen's name, doesn't it? Like she’d belong to some kind of rich, noble family. I've always told her that. She'd laugh and say, 'I'm already rich with love for you'. It was our little on-going joke. That was during happier times, I guess."

"Is she beautiful?"

"Oh, god yes. She's always been very beautiful. I mean, even now...When I met her for the first time, I thought to myself how it was never going to happen. Guys like me, we don't get lucky like that. I wished that I could be with someone even half as beautiful as her. Then it happened. For some reason, she picked me. Me! I couldn't believe it. I never deserved her, or her beauty. Even after the accident..." The smile left his face, and he closed his eyes. "She doesn't love me anymore...I guess that's part of the reason why I'm here."

"Why do you think that?"

"Oh, it's just...after being with someone for so long, you begin to memorize them. You get inside their thoughts. Their thoughts become your own." A veil of sadness shadowed his face. "I believe she blames me for the accident."

"Would you like to tell me what happened?"

He put his head down and she noticed the tiny bald patch surrounded by wisps of graying hair. He shook his head and then, very quietly, the words began to trickle from his mouth. "It was dark out. I couldn't see. Day before I lost my glasses. She said they were probably on the night stand at home. Funny thing is that they were." He stopped, and took in a deep sigh. “I’m sorry – I don’t like to think about it. I need to talk about it, though. She never wants to talk about it.

“So we’re on our way back home. It’s starting to get bad outside, all kinds of snow and sleet. She turns on the radio and a song is playing. ‘So build me up, Buttercup, don’t break my heart’. She started singing and I couldn’t help but smile. She was always singing, and sometimes after a hard day of work it was the only thing that made me smile.” He began rubbing his forehead in those circular motions again. She figured it was something he did when he was nervous.

“Take your time, take as much time as you need.”

“So she’s singing and then this damn dog runs into the street. It was so dark out, I didn't even see the damned thing, and Cathy screams at me. I lost control...and pretty soon we’re spinning, and then we’re in the air.” He became silent for a few moments, and then began again in a voice barely above a whisper. “Then everything was quiet. So quiet. I looked over at her. I tried reaching for her, and she was alive and awake. She said my name - 'Jim, Jim are you okay?' - It was so cold out. Someone must have seen us because we heard sirens coming toward us a little while later.

"When I woke up at the hospital, two weeks had gone by. She was waiting for me by the bed. I saw her face, and the scars, and then the wheelchair. I didn’t recognize her. I thought I was having a nightmare. I began to scream. Can you imagine what that must have been like for her? And yet, all the while, she was caressing my face and telling me that everything would be okay. But there was this look in her eyes. Something shifted." He let out a long, unstable sigh. "It was this...look of complete betrayal."

He got up and began pacing the room. She saw his upper lip tremble. "You know what she loved before? She loved to dance. She took many classes as a little girl. Tap, Jazz, Ballet. She had just learned to Salsa, too. She'd wear these long, flowing red dresses to class, put on this bright cherry red lipstick and come home so excited. Always pestering me, always wanting me to go, but I was busy with work." His shoulders hunched over, and a sudden primal sob escaped him.

She went towards him for nothing more than a pat on the back, but then his arms encircled her waist.

"Will you dance with me?" he asked.

"You know I don't do things like this. It's unprofessional..."

"Please." There was a desperate need in his voice, a yearning for something that she could never give him.

She stood very still, as he ran his hands down the length of her back, up through her hair. He began to sway, back and forth. There was a hypnotic tenderness in his touch, though it wasn't at all sexual. Like a father's touch, something she had longed for all of her life. She began to sway with him, feeling something she had never felt before. Pity? No. She pitied many of the other people who walked into her life though this man was different. She wanted to erase his sadness, even if it was only temporarily.

"I haven't gotten this close to a woman in over five years," he whispered. "She won't let me get near her anymore. I sometimes wonder how I expect her to love me when I don't even love myself anymore."

She had never let a client embrace her in that way. It was against the rules. It was then that she looked up into the man's kind, sad eyes knowing that there was one thing she could give him in that moment that his wife couldn’t.

"You must be dying for a woman to touch you again. Here you don't have to worry about love."

A homesick feeling rose up inside of him. He suddenly wanted to be back in bed with his wife, instead of in the small hotel room. Looking down at the beautiful young prostitute, he thought how the girl could have been his daughter, or granddaughter for that matter. He gently wiped at the dark liner around her eyes, kissed her cheek, smiled. She reached for him, but he had already made his way across the room.

Grabbing his jacket, he pulled out a wad of money and left it on the small nightstand by the bed. "Thank you for the dance," he said, bowing his head, "and for listening."

Moments later, she stood alone, wiping her own tears away. She walked over to the full length mirror in the cramped bathroom and redid her make-up. Another client would be coming by to see her, and she had to look her best.


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Felicia Aguilar has been writing stories all of her life. Her work has been published in The NW Drizzle, Postcard Shorts, and the Flash Fiction Offensive. She lives in Dallas, Texas and is the mother to two wild toddler children, and wife to a wonderful husband who supports all of her creative endeavors. More of her work can be seen at http://www.editred.com/whyshewrote.