Chapter 9

After talking with Gwen I went home and thought things out. It was a sleepless night and the following morning I called Maggie before she went off to work.

"Hi," I said for openers, a pretty safe beginning.

"Oh, hi, I was just thinking about you."

"I should have guessed, I said, "my ears are burning."

That brought on a giggle and I felt a lot better.

"Maggie, we've got to talk."

Now I know that's something women usually say, and on hearing it men usually want to run for the hills. But Maggie didn't react that way at all, perhaps because she was a woman, perhaps she just wanted to hear what I had to say.

"How about meeting me for lunch?" She said.

"All right, where and when?"

It was that simple. And here I'd tossed and turned all night wondering what to say next and I was still searching for the right words and now I didn't need them. Needless to say, I breathed a sigh of relief, set the time and place and got to work myself.

I'm a free lance writer by the way. Just before meeting Maggie I had sold three separate articles on one day to Playboy, Forbes and Business Week. I should add that I didn't dash them all off the same day, anything but. No, I had been working on them off and on for almost four months. All had business related themes and the Forbes article left me with sufficient material from which to carve out the Business Week article. My agent shopped them around and it just happened that all three publications accepted my stuff on the same day. I had called Gwen and Bernie with an offer to take them out to celebrate and they made a counter-offer -- a date with Maggie and so, here I am, back at the starting gate, still trying to figure out what to say to Maggie when we meet again.

I didn't really get any work done, rather I stewed about what to say at lunch and decided that the best course of action would be to be direct and to the point. Hopefully, Maggie would take it from there and we could bring things to a head.

I did manage to make reservations for us at a local restaurant and was decently attired and on time, actually ten minutes early for our date/meeting.

She looked gorgeous as she walked through the door and looked around the room before spotting me at a corner table. Everyman in the place watched her walk (if that's what she did) to my table and stop, waiting for me to rise and hold her chair out for her, which I did with as much gallantry as I could muster up.

We had iced teas and salads. She ordered a Cobb and I mixed greens and I began to talk.

From the first it seemed that Maggie was prepared for this entire conversation and as a result I was stymied as to how to proceed.

"Maggie," I said, "I really feel like I'm in the dark with you on a... in several areas. So please understand if I go off target or start babbling incoherently."

She nodded and took a sip of her tea.

I spoke with Bernie and Gwen last night," it hit me immediately that I'd placed Bernie's name before Gwen's and I began thinking all sorts of Freudian thoughts and almost lost track of where I was going.

"And, well, learned a few things about you. But perhaps I should start with first things first. When we were making love you told me not to fall in love with you, and that simply won't work. I am in love with you and nothing can change that."

A tear rolled down her cheek and I held my napkin out to her and gently wiped it away. Another followed and I did the same.

"If we keep this up, I'll never finish what I have to say," I said hoping to lighten the moment and apparently did, for she smiled and dapped at the ext tear and it was the last.

"So naturally, I turned to Gwen for the answer since she and Bernie brought us together. I learned about Palo and you and what happened after he died. I am so very sorry that you've suffered over his loss and I'm willing to do anything I can to help you. Except, please don't ask me not to love you. I can't do that."

Her hand reached across the table and cover mine, giving it a squeeze.

"You don't have to love me back... it's just that I can't not love you. I can't prevent it, it just happened. And other than a teenaged crush on a girl whose name I no longer remember, I've never been in love before."

This wasn't exactly what I had rehearsed earlier, not in any sense, but my heart had taken control and I let it go.

"May I say something?" Maggie asked gently.

"Of course," I said and took a long gulp of my own iced tea.

"You have part of the picture, not the whole of it. Yes, I have been mourning Palo. Mourning him and cursing him for his infidelities. I interrupted you because I sensed you were about to launch into a diatribe about telling me that although I'm depressed that I'm loved, and deserve to feel better about myself and in fact, will feel better about myself with appropriate treatment."

I was shaking my head, saying, "No, No, No."

"Well I have not been left to grieve alone, as they say. I have had the benefit of adequate counseling and it has helped me recover; for I was depressed. In fact, I was very depressed. But that's behind me now. You may think the many men I've slept with are part of the problem and perhaps early on they were. But not now; I have discovered that I love sex. I love to fuck, pure and simple. I do like you. I don't love you. What's different about you is I want to have sex with you again and again. I don't intend to discard you as I have the others; and in that context you're different. And while I'm at it I might as well yell you this: Leslie is also my lover and has been for two months. We planned your seduction... the phone call... the thing at the window... all of it was planned. I owe you an apology for it. It really wasn't fair to play with your emotions that way and I won't blame you if you get up and leave me here and never speak to me again. But please hear me out.

I was trying to breathe, but couldn't. The waiter came and placed the salads in front of us, but I never saw him. I could only stare at Maggie and wonder... but wonder what? My mind was racing, but going nowhere. The one sensible thought I had, I clung to for I had nowhere else to go. That was, 'hear her out, there may be a workable solution to this... this nightmare.'

She resumed speaking after the waiter left. "I... I was hoping that you would join us... Leslie and I and form a three-some. We don't have to live together, but could do so if you preferred it. Or you could live with me or Leslie so others might see you as a couple with me a close friend and no suspicions would be raised."

'A three-some!' I thought. 'My god, was she serious?'

I asked her if she was serious.

"Of course I am. Shall I call Leslie and have her confirm all this?"

I waved her off. "No, I believe you. I believe all right, it's just... difficult to accept. I mean the entire concept..."

"It's true enough," she added.

"Does Gwen know about... ?"

"No, but it was her idea of getting us together. She fully believes that I'm in need of a good man."

Maggie laughed. "Well that's partly true. I am in need of a good man. And you are indeed a good man. Gwen's got it wrong about my wanting to settle down with a guy. I don't... well I do, but in the way I've described to you as a three-some."

"Tell me something, Maggie," I said.

She waited for me to go on.

"You say you're interested in forming a three-some with Leslie and me, but for how long? A week, a month?"

"Oh, no. I mean indefinitely. Years, perhaps forever. But it won't last, I know that. We're not meant to live that way, so it would be a matter of time before we dissolved the relationship. Perhaps one of us will leave and the others will find a replacement or continue on as a pair. I don't know. But we'd have each other for a time, just how long a time is an unknown factor."

"What about financial matters between us? For example if you and I live together and Leslie is perceived to outsiders as a friend and we live together for several years, or long enough to be considered man and wife? Who gets alimony? Is there alimony?"

"Strictly speaking, we continue with our own respective careers. What we earn, we earn and it is ours, not shared, unless we want to share, for example, I buy you a present, or you take us to dinner. Umm, acquisitions like furniture, I don't know, perhaps we can have something drawn up like a nuptial agreement."

"Maggie, I want to be with you. I want you to understand that I truly believe that as of this moment I love you. And because I love you and want to be with you I accept this... this arrangement. But I will always be hoping that we can make it together and that marriage is a possibility for us somewhere down the road."

She released a long pent-up sigh of relief.

"So you... agree to go along with us?"

"I do."

We both smiled at the use of those particular words to cement our 'relationship.'

"Oh..." I said.

"Yes?"

"Will there be others involved with us?"

"I don't know. It's a possibility of course; we don't know what lies ahead."

I was still absorbing the details and what they represented when Maggie squeezed my hand and said, "It's been a delightful lunch. I was afraid it might have been a disaster, so... my place around six?"

"I'll be there with bells on."

"If anything's on, I hope it's a hardon." That said she got up came around to me and kissed me hard on the mouth. I returned the kiss and when we separated all the men were applauding us. I paid the check and we went our separate ways.