J. McKenna - Wanted - Kept Woman

Now she just read the Personals for fun, she had told her best friend Wendy.

“Oh, come on, Suzanne,” she’d responded. “You gave it two tries since your divorce and you’re ready to run for cover? Good God, woman, if you’d been Eisenhower during World War II, we’d all be speaking German today! Get real! You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket!”

Easy for her to say , Suzanne thought. Wendy Thomason never wanted for dates. She was tall and slender, and good-looking. She had long blonde hair that she often kept in a bun that most men itched to unravel. Twice when they were walking down the street together, Suzanne had seen men walk into poles, their eyes riveted by this Nordic goddess.

Sometimes Suzanne wondered why she hung around with Wendy. Just looking at her made her depressed. She felt like such a frump in comparison. But they’d been friends since high school. She knew Wendy had a good heart and really cared about her. In fact, Wendy would be disappointed that Suzanne thought herself frumpy. “You’re a good-looking woman, Suze,” she’d tell her. “You just need to quit wearing your sadness on your face.”

Today, as she ate her cheeseburger and scanned the paper, she wasn’t looking for anything in particular. She was just passing time. That’s when the small personal ad caught Suzanne’s attention: “Wanted: Kept woman for wealthy businessman. Call…”

She stared at the words, shocked. Questions ran into each other in Suzanne’s mind. Can you advertise for something like that? What is a kept woman anyway? Does he want a beautiful gold-digger, good for nothing but fucking and shopping? She giggled at the idea.

Ha! What a life that would be! For a moment, she could imagine herself, stretched out in a king-sized bed, nicely satiated after a good morning fuck. Her keeper or sugar daddy or whatever you call him would smile, touch her cheek and wink, and head off to work, leaving her with the rest of the day to lie about the pool or to go shopping.

Wow. Not bad , she thought.

She laughed and stuck the paper into her purse, mentally dismissing the ad, although the fantasy lingered. Why is that? she wondered. After all, Suzanne had sought the protection of a strong man before, and it hadn’t exactly worked out as promised. Absently, she rubbed the side of her face, as if she could still feel the bruise.

Sighing, she looked at her watch and knew it was time to head back. Her body ached at the thought. Working for a catalogue fulfillment warehouse the week before school starts can do that to you, she reflected. All the kids wanted their new school clothes right now . And for some reason, the fashions offered by the Blue Bayou Co. were all the rage this year.

Blue Bayou. Suzanne shook her head at the name. The closest this company had been to the bayou was when her boss, Jack Smyth, flew over Louisiana in a jet. He just plucked the name out of thin air, thinking it sounded “cool”. When she had signed on two years ago, the job was just going to be temporary. Now, at age thirty-two, she felt trapped by it.

She should never have taken that promotion! Moving from the warehouse floor into the office had promised to be easier, but it simply added a new layer of duties to her schedule. During busy times, she still was expected to “help out” on the floor when the staff fell behind on their orders. Trouble was, they were so short-staffed Suzanne had to fill in quite a bit. Meanwhile, her paperwork piled up on her desk, forcing her to work extra hours to catch up.

She left the mall and slid into her car. She glanced at her makeup in the rearview mirror. Suzanne frowned at the puffiness that had crept into her face over the last few years. Still, her friends reassured her how pretty she was. She had an oval face with wide-set amber eyes, surrounded by a well-kept halo of brown hair. Mike, the handsome married man in shipping, even told her one day that she looked a lot like actress Sigourney Weaver, “only shorter”. Suzanne had immediately thought, and fatter .

“You’re always putting yourself down,” Wendy had told her on many occasions.

She knew her friend was right. She tried to be positive, but her life seemed like such a mess right now.

“I need a new life,” she told her reflection. “Can I do a trade-in?”

That evening, on her couch in her tiny apartment, sharing a bottle of wine, she listened as Wendy told her how miserable her life had become. Suzanne wanted to smother her with a pillow.

“I’m telling you, Suze, the men I’m meeting lately are crass and crude. No style. No taste. They just want to fuck me and if I say no, they just shrug and move on, like if I won’t, they’ll find someone who will—and they probably do. What’s wrong with guys nowadays?”

Suzanne didn’t know—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been laid. And her vibrator didn’t count. “Maybe you should just let them,” she said without thinking.

A brief smile stole across Wendy’s face. “Well, yeah, if they’re worthy.” It was followed immediately by a grimace. “But so many aren’t—they’re Peter Pans or self-centered assholes.”

“At least you’re getting laid when you want to!” she responded just a little too sharply.

Wendy looked up to see the pain on her friend’s face. “I’m sorry, Suze. I’m just venting. I’m not trying to make you feel bad.”

“No, it’s all right,” she said, a little embarrassed. “I’m a little envious, as you can tell. I don’t get asked out much. Not since, you know…”

“You aren’t missing much. I get invitations—it’s just that most are from real jerks.”

“Come on, they can’t be as bad as Sam.”

Wendy shrugged. “Well, no. Close, maybe.” She paused, nibbling at her lower lip. “You know, you gotta stop comparing everyone to Sam. He was, um, unique. The odds that you’ll run into another like him are very small.”

“I know. I think I’m ready to really get out there and try again. I’m certainly interested. I’m…I’m just scared. When I met Sam, I thought he was ‘The One’.” She made quote marks in the air.

Wendy held out her hands, palms up, like an imaginary scale. “So, let’s see… You’ve got your fear of meeting another Sam versus your—what?—horniness quotient?” She moved her hands up and down as if finding a balance.

Suzanne giggled. “Um, yeah, that’s it. Only, I think horniness is starting to edge ahead.”

“That’s the spirit! Like an ancient Chinese philosopher once said,” she faked a Charlie Chan accent, showing her front teeth, “You don’t haffa find Mr. Right. You only haffa find Mr. Long.” Wendy winked at her.

Suzanne guffawed and put her hand up over her mouth in mock horror. “So you’re saying, I should just get laid and forget trying to find Mr. Right?!” She stopped short of adding, “like you do.”

“No, I’m not saying you should fuck the first guy that comes along.” Wendy frowned. “Wait, maybe I am. You need to get laid just to clear your head. Get the cobwebs out. Then you can start looking more carefully. That’s what I’d do. You never know who might turn up, a gem among the Jimmies.”

“A sweetheart among the swine.”

“A cock among the cockroaches!”

“A tool among the fools!” Suzanne giggled.

“That’s it! So what if you screw a few men who aren’t perfect? You’ll be gaining some needed experience for when Mr. Right comes along.”

Just listening to Wendy talk about men made her realize how long it had been. God, I am horny! She squeezed her legs together. “Okay, tell me about the last time you made love. What was he like? What happened?”

Wendy eyed her friend speculatively. Suzanne knew what she was thinking. Whenever Suzanne felt particularly depressed, she liked to listen to Wendy’s descriptions of her recent liaisons. She wanted them as graphic as possible—even if Wendy had to embellish.