Out of the Office
When Helen got into Mark’s car, she was more relaxed than she thought possible. It wasn’t a fancy car, but an ordinary Toyota sedan, very much like the one her parents owned. The interior was almost the same.
She gave Mark directions to her apartment. Partway through her discourse Mark stopped her. “Couldn’t you just give me the address? It seems like we’re just following the number twelve bus route.”
Helen shuddered. They were following the number twelve bus route. She wasn’t very familiar with the city, even though she had lived there for almost a year, and she didn’t know how to get anywhere without taking the bus. She blushed and gave him the address.
Mark changed lanes and look them onto a much faster-moving road. Apparently, they had really been going the slow way.
Finally, he parked in front of her building. “Do you want to come in?” Helen asked nervously. She had never invited a guy up to her apartment before. The idea made her all twitchy.
“That was the plan,” he said, taking off his seat belt.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I came to watch you change.”
“What!” Helen exclaimed. “I am not going to let you watch me change.”
“Look, Helen, I’m not trying to get a glimpse of you naked or something, but I want to watch you turn into yourself. Don’t you think that will take the spell off both of us?”
Helen looked at him carefully. What he said made a great deal of sense to her. He was probably right. If he watched her take off her wig, all her other flare and then saw her in her regular clothes with only her glasses to frame her eyes then the illusion would probably be destroyed. If he didn’t like her for who she truly was then it would come out right away and both of them would be spared the pain of not getting who they wanted.
“Okay,” Helen said, thinking there was a possibility that after he saw the transformation he wouldn’t want to make her supper anymore and would simply leave the apartment. For some reason, she couldn’t let that happen. She wanted a chance to convince him that ‘Helen’ was a really amazing girl, so she had to have dinner with him. She absolutely had to. “But, I’d rather not do that here if that’s okay. Could I just get a bag and come over to your place?”
Mark looked shocked. “I guess that would be okay.”
“Kay. I’ll be right back,” Helen said, getting out of the car and heading into the building.
***
Mindy was ecstatic about the possibility of being Helen’s makeup artist for the ad campaign.
“Yay me!” she declared happily. “Where should we go to celebrate?”
Helen bit her lip and went into her bedroom without answering. She had to pack her bag.
“What are you doing?” Mindy asked when she saw Helen fill up a backpack with clothes and shoes. “You’re not doing something else I shouldn’t tell your mom, are you?”
“No,” Helen said, realizing full well that it looked like she was packing an overnight bag. “I’ll be back tonight. I won’t be fooling around or anything.”
“What will you be doing?” Mindy asked seriously.
Helen thought about telling her what she and Mark had planned but decided against it. Mindy probably wasn’t the type to sympathize with that level of understanding, and Helen didn’t want to be ridiculed. She doubted Mindy ever let a man see her without war paint. “None of your business,” she said, sliding her makeup remover into the bag.
“Okay, but phone if you’re going to be home later than two. If I wake up in the morning and you’re not here, I’ll call your parents and ask them if you went home for the weekend.”
Helen brushed her off. “I'm not staying out all night."
She gathered the rest of her stuff together and went down to Mark’s car. She opened the backdoor and threw her bag in before she got in the front seat.
“Does it really take that much stuff?” he asked her.
“Yes, it does.”
“Okay then,” he said, shifting the car into reverse. “This is probably going to be a very illuminating experience for me.”
***
Mark’s apartment was a lot nicer than Helen expected after seeing his car. There was hardwood flooring. The countertops were marble, the appliances were sparkling stainless steel, the sofa was leather, and the plants were real.
Helen sat down on the couch and said, “You must make a lot more money than I do.”
Mark shrugged his shoulders. “This isn’t really my place. It’s my brother’s. He’s just not living here right now. It’s not even my style, but it’s a dang sight better than living in the type of place I could afford. The biggest bonus is that I don't have to have roommates.”
She nodded.
“Are you disillusioned about me?” Mark asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t got a fancy car. Surely you saw the Jaguar Dominic drives. No? And this place; sure, it’s nice, but it’s not mine,” he said dryly. It was like he was trying to pull the wool off Helen’s eyes in the same way she was trying to disenchant him.
“Do you think I’m impressed with money?” she questioned.
“You could be. I can’t get the way you talked about your escort service job out of my head. You really did it for the money, so I thought it was a given that you care about that sort of thing.”
“I only took that job because I was practically starving. Come on, I told you before I don’t harbor any little dreams of becoming a model or an actress. I want to be an administrative assistant and build off that. I don’t want to live a glamorous life and live continuously in the spotlight.” She paused. “Actually, this place is kind of intimidating. You need to know that my kitchen has lino flooring and the fridge and the stove are different colors? We don’t even own a dishwasher.”
“But doesn’t that make you aim for something better?” Mark asked as he sat down on one of the arms of the sofa.
“No. Actually, I didn’t realize how mismatched my apartment was until I saw your arrangement. Most of the stuff in my apartment isn’t even mine. It belongs to my cousin. So, you and I are in a similar situation. You just have a wealthier relative,” she said with a smile. “Besides, I think I’m even more comfortable with you knowing that this stuff isn’t yours. This is a pretty sterile place, isn’t it?”
Mark smiled and moved to a chair exactly adjacent to where Helen was sitting.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said. “I’ve shown you mine. You show me yours.”
Helen bit her lip. He was right. For men, it often seemed like their appeal was based on their purchasing power instead of themselves. She couldn’t blame him for being a little nervous when she was the type of girl to sell herself for a hundred dollars an hour, which made her too expensive for his blood.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a mirror, which she propped on the coffee table between them and tilted toward her face. Then she crossed her legs and prepared to get started.
“The first thing to come off is the wig,” she said pulling the claws out of her hair.
Once it was off her real hair (though short) was pinned down in the front. It was terribly flattened, because wig hair was worse than hat hair. “Look at this,” she said, showing Mark the inside of the wig. “These claws go into my real hair to hold the wig in place.”