So that happened to me recently, and thanks to a little too much chocolate ice cream for breakfast, I decided to go ahead and write a short story. See "Candyland" below. I incorporated parts of the original status and various comments from others as well.
If you need writing prompt, start scanning FaceBook. Truth is stranger than fiction -- and can inspire fiction.
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Candyland
Two weeks ago, while at the liquor store a mile south of my
house, I grabbed a bottle of wine and got in line to pay for it. The first
things I noticed about the young woman in front of me was she was pretty,
unusually animated and very chatty. As she was talking to the cashier, she kept
moving her fingers in and out of the ends of her hair, twisting a curl of
brunette hair around her forefinger and then letting it unspool. She quizzed
the cashier about good local microbrews and volunteered how she used to live in
Vegas so she didn’t understand the Minnesota liquor laws.
“Vegas was just one big cesspool of neon lights,” she said,
“but I miss the sunshine. Minnesotans, maybe all the time in the snow, they are
always so polite, but sometimes, it’s a little like Stepford, everyone silently
nodding and smiling.”
The cashier, clearly Minnesotan, smiled, and handed her her
change. But she didn’t leave, and went on talking as I stepped up and handed
him my bottle of wine.
“Have you ever been to Las Vegas?” she asked. Still quiet,
he nodded no. “It’s not just casinos and strippers. I mean, those are there too, but there is
something about the desert, when you get a little bit out of town. I don’t mean the desert where the mafia
buries people, but the kind of hiking desert in the spring, after one of those
crazy rainstorms that come up from the south and dry up 30 seconds after the
clouds pass, but that’s the day that everything blooms. It’s amazing, when you see that, that this
place that seems lifeless is really just hiding itself.”
The clerk handed me my change, and said to her, finally
verbal, “Sounds nice.”
“Yeah, it is,” she said, and gave up trying to engage him
then, heading for the door.
She walked out in front of me and when we got outside, she
turned to me and said without preamble, “Can you give me a ride to 65th and
Humboldt?” I noticed her eyes then,
large and brown, oddly rounded like a cartoon character, but with clear whites,
not bloodshot. The address was only about six blocks out of my way and totally
residential, so I said, "sure."
We got in the car and she asked me, again playing with her
hair, what I did for a living. I told her I worked in training for educational
testing, and she launched into telling me she has experience in sales and training
and asked if we're hiring.
“No, not right now,” I said, afraid she was going to ask me
for a reference next.
“Look, let me give you my number, just in case something
comes up. My name is Candy
Cartwright,” she said, and listed off her
number.
By then, we were in front of her house, a small but tidy
place with deep green shutters and a linden tree listing too far toward the
house. I wrote her number down on the liquor store receipt, and then she added,
"I'm also a massage therapist and I do massages privately so if you're
looking for one, call me." She then got out of my car, waved and smiled as
I drove off.
I was left with the question: Was she a) looking for a job;
b) looking for a date; or, c) looking for a John? Or maybe the moral of this
story was not to let strangers into my car.
She was petite and harmless looking,
with a fresh-faced no make-up look except a hint of lipstick, wearing a t-shirt
and jeans that, I confess, I'd noticed she did fill out nicely. It’s not like she
was 18 years old in lime-green spandex twirling a feather boa. She was probably
in her early 30s, so maybe too young for my 47 year old self. Or maybe not. My
sister endlessly told me I looked so young, despite the gray at my
temples. Those long Minnesota winters
did keep the sun damage down.
Honestly, something about Candy scared me a little bit, be
she lonely gal, unemployed gal, friendly hooker -- whatever she was, she was so
animated, so lively, direct but also confusing.
Back in my own house, I put the white wine in the fridge to
chill and pet Roscoe the dog until he ambled off again to nap by his year-round post by the fireplace.
I put her phone number in the basket on the kitchen counter where I tossed the
mail.
——
A week later, as I finished both a glass of wine and paying
the gas and electric bills (rates went up yet again), I came across the receipt
with her number. I’d googled her name at work the day after our meeting, but
come up with nothing on Candy Cartwright except information on a pro-wrestler
with an impressive record and a devoted following. But nothing about my
neighborhood Candy.
I wished she didn’t have a name that suggested either
childhood board games or hospital-striped strip teasers. I mean, someone has to
be named Candy, and Candace was a bit stuffy (I went by Ed, not my given of
Edward) but Candy seemed to suggest the “happy ending” type of massage, rather
than therapeutic. Still. Who plies her trade at a suburban liquor
store? Or is opportunity everything, so
she just talked and played with her hair wherever she went?
I turned the receipt over in my hands a few times, and then put
it back in the bill basket. It would be silly to call.
But an hour and two more glasses of wine later, silly didn’t
seem like such a bad thing. Sometimes, when one normally says "no," it's
exciting to say "yes" and see
to where the door opens.
The phone rang four times, and I was beginning to come to
the unpleasant conclusion that I would either have to leave a message, or
hang-up knowing that my number would be up on her caller ID, when I heard,
“Hi!” She sounded a little breathless.
“Hi, this is Ed. I gave you a ride back from the liquor
store last week?”
“Ed! Hi! It’s nice to hear from you. So is DCR hiring now?
I’m a sales whiz!”
“Oh, no, I was just calling to...” Crap. Why was I
calling? To find out if you’re a
hooker? If you’re single? If I’m not quite as middle-aged looking or
feeling as I thought? “That is, you mentioned that you’re a massage
therapist? Because I think I’ve done
something to my,” Hamstring? That would make me sound like a runner -- but
no, thighs were too personal. Foot? No,
that made me sound decrepit. “…my shoulder.
I was cleaning the gutters, and I think I pulled something. And I
thought of you.” Thought of you? Could I
take that back? Too late.
“Great! Well, I
should tell you - I’m not exactly licensed.
But I have good hands, really.”
“Oh, umm” Holy crap, she was
a hooker. “Umm.”
“I’m not licensed in Minnesota, I should say, not yet. I was in Vegas. If you’re not licensed in Vegas, people think
you’re a call girl. It got annoying. I
mean, seriously, go find a showgirl. They’d do anybody.”
“Oh, umm.” Thank god
for telephones, I thought, because in person, she would have seen the flood
of
blood that rushed up into my face, making my ears tingle. “Umm, no, it’s just
my shoulder.”
“You don’t want to see a doctor?”
“No, it’s just something that flares up from time to time…it
will unknot itself again, I just get sick of it sometimes.” This was true. Too
many hours hunched over the computer left my right shoulder and up into my neck
tightened up so badly that I sometimes felt like Quasimoto.
“A massage can fix that right up, and you’ll feel great!
Since I’m not licensed in MN, I can give you deal. You just, you know, can’t sue me. Ok?”
“OK.” We agreed to a fee and set up a time two days
later. She did her informal massages out
of her house, and so I would return to the same place just six blocks
away. She suddenly seemed awkwardly
close.
On the day of my appointment, my entire back had nary a knot
to be found, and I felt intimately aware of my healthy shoulders, and
considered canceling. But it wasn’t a
date. I wasn’t a John. She wasn’t
applying for a job. It was a massage,
and massages were supposed to be good for your health in all sorts of ways. Why
not? I hadn’t had a woman’s hands on my
back in six months, not since I’d told Miriam that no, I didn’t believe in
UFOs, and that I wished she’d stop talking about them, that I wished, in fact,
that she would just go. It was the least smooth break-up in my illustrious and
increasingly infrequent romantic life, and I later felt bad about it, but
seriously, what adult woman believes in UFOs spiriting people away? I mean, those people not on anti-psychotics?
And she called me “hon” all the time.
Not honey, but “hon.” It grated on me.
Of late, I’d spent too much time thinking about
Schopenhauer’s comment that “A man can be himself only so long as he is alone,
and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when
he is alone that he is really free.”
At 6:57pm, I found myself back in front of Candy’s
house. The linden tree was still listing
into the gutters, probably providing a nice highway for the ants into the
house. Before I was a homeowner, I never noticed these things. I hated that sometimes.
I rang the bell, and heard her rustling behind the door with
her quick step. The door swung open, and she greeting me warmly, like an old
friend, with a quick hug that threw me, this expanse of heat pressed up
momentarily against me, and just as fast removed. She was wearing an orange tank
top and floaty gray yoga pants, and her hair pulled back in a ponytail, more
evidence that this was not a date nor was she a hooker.
She ushered me into the living room, a small space with wood
floors, squishy formless sofas and an extra-large purple velour bean bag in one
corner. In another corner next to the bookshelves, there was what looked a like
a small altar with a photo, flower and small statue. Incense, a vaguely floral
scent under some kind of sage, dry, arid, lingered in the air.
“Great, right on time! You seem like the punctual type. So
have a seat here for a minute. Do you want a glass of water?”
“No, thanks, I’m fine.” I perched on the edge of the couch,
and folded my hands together in front of me. With clarity, I realized this was
a terrible, terrible idea.
She blinked at me twice, and then started to laugh. “You’re
nervous! You haven’t had a massage before, have you?”
“Not a professional one, no,” I confessed.
“Well, informal, given my licensing issues, but yeah, ok.”
She reached around for her pony tail, flicking its end through her fingers once
before letting if fly back again.
“So the deal is, my table is set up in the dining room. I’ll leave the room while you undress, and
then you slide under the sheet, so you have some privacy. I mostly do Swedish massage, so pretty
gentle, but I may lean into that bad shoulder a bit more.”
She continued on, quizzing me on any injuries or
sensitivities, and then led me through a swinging door into the dining
room. A chandelier overhead had been
chained closer to the ceiling, and was dimmed so that only a mellow glow fell
over the massage table, and glinted off the glass of a china-filled breakfront
in the corner. Thick blinds covered the windows.
“I figured I never used the dining room anyway, and I don’t
have a table here anyway, so it became my massage room almost
immediately.”
After instructing me to position myself face down under the
sheet, she left the room.
I stood for a minute, looking at my reflection it the glass
breakfront, considering the oddity of
walking into a strange home and stripping
down 5 minutes later. I shrugged, and felt, finally, my shoulder twinge,
justified at last. I began to undress. Peeling off my t-shirt, I thought of the
cashier at the liquor store, and wondered if he got massages here too. My
sister was always telling me, live a little, leave yourself open to the world,
explore new experiences, be vulnerable. I made good money at DCR, so why not
blow a bit on a little weird, awkward luxury?
Might as well benefit from all that rampant capitalism.
Moments after I had settled myself into the massage table
under the sheet, enjoying the mild scent of lavender in the cotton, I heard her
knock on the door. “Ready?”
“Sure.” I heard the door swing open to admit her. Looking over my shoulder, I noted she was
still wearing the tank top, but now also small bike shorts of a strange murky
green. She really did have a great butt.
No denying that, and not what I wanted to ponder in that particular
circumstance. With the orange top and sheen of green, she seems like some kind
of tropical bird, brightly colored, reflecting the little light in the dim
room.
“So your job here is to just relax, Ed. Feel free to talk or not talk, and definitely
tell me if anything hurts or is uncomfortable. I’ll ask you questions if I’m
not sure on anything, but mostly, I’ll just listen to your body and let my
hands do the rest.”
She lifted the sheet covering my feet, and began rubbing
some kind of almond-scented oil into them.
Her hands were remarkably strong, and all that lively energy that
usually sparked out through chatter seemed to travel through her hands into my
feet and ankles. Time drifted and her
hands moved. I became aware of my breathing
and how it synchronized with hers. Somewhere outside, a dog barked at car
driving up the street. A car door
slammed. My feet melted away from my body.
When the front door opened with a jangle of keys, I came
back to myself as Candy’s hands sprang away from my feet.
“Shit,” she said. “Sorry, Ed, it’s my roommate. Just give me one minute. I’ll be right back.” She pulled the sheet
back over my legs.
The person who came through the door had a heavy step,
clomping into the living room. “Candy?”
he called. “Damn, I wish you’d stop burning that incense in here. It smells
like a goddamn brothel.”
Candy slid through the swinging dining room door back to the
living room, pausing in front of it, I realized, to make sure her form blocked
any view into the room as the door swung closed again.
And I had the revelation that I didn’t much feel like having
a massage anymore. I rolled off the
table, and located my boxers and jeans, pulling them on quicker than I’d
previously thought possible. Screw vulnerability.
In the living room, I heard Candy talking. “Thor, hon, I
didn’t expect you home quite so early tonight.
Slow at the bar?”
“Scheduling screw up. Larsen had already gotten there, and I
figured, hell, time to go home.”
Candy dropped her voice, but since I’d now moved closer to
the door as I was tucking in my shirt, could hear her say to the looming
presence of Thor visible through the crack in the door, “Look, don’t be mad,
Thor, but I have a client here right now.
And I sort of need to finish up. So like an hour?”
Thor said nothing for what seemed like a long moment. “You
have a naked guy here in my house?”
Whispering emphatically, she said, “No, no, it’s a woman.
Keep your voice down. She’s very nice. I met her through Marla. You know Marla
and all her church people.”
I moved away from the door then, sat quickly in the wooden
chair in the corner to lace up my shoes, trying to figure a way out of being
part of what could blossom into an unpleasant domestic matter. “Look, I’m going upstairs,” Thor said. “You finish up, but,
Jesus, Candy, we’ve talked about this. I
don’t like having you rub all these people running around the house. Get
Marla’s friend out the door fast, and then let’s get some dinner. I wanted a
night home with you.”
Candy said, “I wouldn’t have scheduled her today if I’d
known, hon. Thanks.”
I heard the perfunctory smack of their lips, and then Thor’s
clomping feet going upstairs.
Candy came swinging back through the door, looked from the
table to me now dressed and sitting in the corner.
“Oh,” she said. “You
heard?”
“I heard. I think maybe I should go, Candy.” She looked at me mournfully, the animation drained
from her, and said, “Yes, I suppose so.”
By unspoken accord, she held open the door for me, and then rushed
to the front door, unlocking it as quietly as possible. I turned to look at her as I exited, her face
impassive, and heard Thor from upstairs saying, “Candy? Marla just texted saying she wants to know
who you mean?” His voice started moving closer coming down the stairs, “She
said she hasn’t referred anyone to you, Candy.”
I started running down the front walk then, my oily feet
sliding around in my socks and the night air full of the warmth of blooming
garden smells. I fumbled with my keys
getting the car door unlocked, and looked to see Thor on the front steps,
filling the frame with his height and breadth. He came bolting down the walk. I
opened the car door, clear then that I could peel away in time, and looked up
to see Candy silhouetted in the doorway.
And with that, I closed the door again without getting in. I
watched Thor’s progress toward me and heard the high pitch of Candy’s voice as
she yelled at Thor, “Hon! Hon! He’s a nice man! Get back here, you big
jerk!” But Thor wasn’t listening to
Candy. To my right, the porch lights
went on at the house next door. Candy
stepped off the front stairs, following Thor’s route toward me. Thor, young, blond, the god of thunder
carried his storm toward me as I waited by my dusty Corolla.
I had never felt more alive.
Every good story starts with a bad decision.
