The Second Fitting

I'd been driving past The Velvet Garter for three Tuesdays before I finally parked the car on the fourth Tuesday. That's the embarrassing part, right there. Three weeks of Tuesday drive-bys, telling myself next week, next week, and then this Tuesday I actually pulled into the lot behind the old Victorian house and sat there with my hands on the wheel like an idiot.

My name is Carlotta, I'm forty-four years old, I teach high school history, and I have been single on purpose for thirteen years. Thirteen! And most of that time I was fine with it, honestly. Happy, even. But there was this one loose thread from my past that kept tugging at me, and it had a specific shape and a specific address, and the address was a boutique in a converted Victorian with blue trim and a brass door handle that probably hadn't been polished since the nineties.

Here's what happened thirteen years ago. I came here, back then, to buy something. A toy. Not a little buzzy bullet thing from the drugstore, but a real one, an elaborate contraption I'd seen on a website and thought about for a month straight. I booked a private fitting and everything. And then I got into the consultation room, and the woman who ran the shop brought the thing out in a nice discreet case, and I looked at it and looked at her and felt like the walls were closing in, and I made some excuse about needing to check my parking meter, and I left. I left my dignity in that room and drove home and never came back.

Until tonight. Tuesday night, shop closed to the public, because when I'd finally worked up the nerve to call last week, the owner told me she does private appointments after hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I said Tuesday. She said six o'clock. I said okay before I could chicken out.

The parking lot had two cars in it, mine and a little silver hatchback. Good. Just the one other person. I checked my hair in the visor mirror, which was pointless, then I checked it again anyway, then I got out and walked up the brick path before I could change my mind.

The brass handle was cold. Inside, the shop was dim and warm, all deep red curtains and little shaded lamps, and standing behind the counter was the owner herself. Akari. Thirty-nine now, she'd told me her age on the phone when I booked, in this cheerful way like it was part of the store policy. She looked exactly the same as I remembered, small and quick, dark hair cut sharp at the jaw, wearing a black cardigan over a burgundy blouse.

"Well, look who came back!" she said, and her whole face lit up. "Carlotta, right? I told you I'd remember you."

"You remembered me," I said. "After all this time?"

"Honey, people don't run out of my fitting room every day. You left a shoe print on my heart." She laughed at her own joke and came around the counter. "I'm kidding. But I did think about you. Come on back, we've got the whole evening."

She led me through the shop, past racks of silk things and shelves of glass and steel, down a short hallway to the same door I'd fled through thirteen years ago. The consultation room had velvet drapes, deep burgundy, floor to ceiling, a big upholstered chaise in the middle, and mirrors on two walls, so wherever you looked there you were.

"Same room," I said.

"Same room, same drapes, I finally replaced the chaise though. The old one had stories." She patted the new one, dark green velvet, and watched me sit down. "So. You want to tell me what happened back then, or do you want to pretend you came in here to buy a scented candle?"

I laughed, and then it turned into the truth somehow, the way it does when somebody's warm enough. "I got scared," I said. "I picked out the toy, you brought it out, and I just. Panicked. I'd been on my own for a while by then, I'd ended things with a woman I was dating, and I think part of me thought if I actually bought the thing I'd have to admit how lonely I was. So I ran."

Akari nodded, slow, like she'd heard this story before in a hundred shapes. "And now?"

"Now I'm forty-four and I'm tired of being scared of a piece of silicone," I said. "That's the whole speech."

"Good speech." She went to a cabinet built into the wall, unlocked it with a little key from her cardigan pocket, and came back with a slim black case. She set it on the chaise beside me and opened it, and there it was. The same toy, or one just like it. A long multi-jointed silicone device, bendable in segments, with a slim handle at one end and a rounded head at the other, deep plum colored, matte and smooth.

"It's the updated model," she said, picking it up and turning it in her hands like a jeweler with a stone. "The joints articulate here, here, and here, so it can hold any curve you set it to. It's got a soft outer layer over a firmer core, and the base has three intensity settings plus a pulse mode nobody ever needs but everybody tries once. It's body safe silicone, it cleans up with soap and water, and it takes two hours on the charger." She set it back in the case, lined up neat. "It also has a remote, but we can leave that in the box. There's a guided session on a little speaker in the case too, my voice walking you through, only if you want it. First time, I always say, keep it simple."

"How do you know it's my first time with one of these?"

"Because you bolted, sweetheart." She said it kindly. "People who've done this before don't bolt."

Fair. That was fair.

"Now, here's how tonight works," she went on, and her voice shifted into something halfway between a nurse and a friend. "I'll give you the room as long as you want. Door locks from the inside, there's water in the carafe, towels on the shelf, lube in the drawer of the side table, the good