'A friend named Sean?' I slid her foam-topped coffee across the marble.
Her laugh tinkled like the proverbial silvery bells. The bearded gentleman at the corner table closed his eyes. 'Precisely,' she said and, with a coyness worthy of a Hollywood screen legend, withdrew a note from her cleavage.
She pressed the folded slip of paper, now warm and fragrant, into my palm. That's when I noticed the back of her hands were shaved. My eyes flew to hers and she laughed again, a throaty chuckle this time. 'That's right, darlin'. She's a he.'
Her mission complete, she/he tossed what I now recognised to be a very expensive wig. He wiggled his elegant manicure as he backed away. 'Don't you be late - and have some fun for me, you hear?'
Boy, I thought, when Sean planned a scene, he really pulled out all the stops. Curious, I unfolded the invitation. I found a Pine Street
address, a fifteen-minute walk from my shop.
'Nine o' clock sharp,' ordered his imperious scrawl. 'Be there or be square. P.S. Tonight's safe-word is "Uncle".'
Apparently, whatever the little devil had planned required safe-words. Trust Sean to choose the one I'd choke before saying. When I was a kid, crying 'Uncle' during a game was the ultimate expression of surrender. But we'd see who'd surrender tonight. I slipped the note into my back pocket and took a fortifying sip of the mocha cappuccino his gender-bending friend had failed to collect.
Insomnia, be damned. I had a feeling I'd need all the fortification I could get.
The address occupied the basement level of an attractive brownstone house. Intimate Notions said its discreet, hand-lettered sign.
The windows were dark and a closed sign hung in the door. Nonetheless, I was sure of my welcome. I descended the four concrete steps and peered through the glass. A small blue light burnt in the back, revealing nothing but shadows. I felt both foolish and excited, which was probably what Sean intended.
Determined not to quail before I'd crossed the starting line, I jammed my thumb over the buzzer. Before the grating echo faded, an invisible someone opened the door.
'Come in,’ said the shadow, a diminutive female shadow. She closed the door behind me and pulled a filmy curtain over the glass. 'One moment,’ she said. I heard high-heeled footsteps moving quickly across a carpet, and then a teardrop chandelier filled the room with a soft, sparkling glow.
Red struck my eyes: lush, venereal red. It lacquered the walls of the octagonal salon. It upholstered the plump, satiny chairs. It swirled across the savage Chinese carpet, and swayed among the rails of multicoloured silk confections that obviously formed the shop's mainstay. Camisoles and teddies hung from ribbon-padded hangers, along with morning gowns and corsets and brassieres of every imaginable style.
At the centre of the room a headless mannequin stood. She wore a matching bra and panty set with the nipples and crotch cut out. I choked back a laugh. I'd always found that sort of get-up ridiculous, a dirty old man joke; not something a woman would choose for herself.
Or so I thought.
'Dear me,’ clucked the woman who'd admitted me. 'I can see I've got my work cut out for me.'
For the first time I turned to her. My jaw dropped. She was a little doll, a spun-sugar, sweet-as-cherry doll, round where a woman ought to be round, and slim where she ought to be slim. Her bright blonde hair framed her innocent face in thick, marcelled waves. Her rosebud mouth barely looked large enough to hold a spoon. Celestial blue eyes widened at my lengthening stare, but I couldn't restrain myself.
Again, I sensed deliberation in Sean's choice of accomplice. What evil genius had led him to pick the two women in all of Philadelphia who would tickle my erotic fancy? Or was I kidding myself about the set-in-stone nature of my preference? Was that the humbling message Sean meant to convey?
To my relief, the delectable cream-puff wore ordinary business clothes - a black angora turtleneck over tapered beige trousers.
'Come,’ she said. 'I need to fit you.'
At once, I pictured her fitting me, her soft white thigh pressed between my own, her pink cheeks hollowed to suckle my nipples to aching points.
Shuddering off the image, I followed her through the opulent, overheated salon. Gold accents glittered about the room. They danced on a floor-length mirror framed in rococo gilt, on the chain from which the chandelier hung, on the -
My hand flew to my throat as I noticed a gold-plated phallus twirling from a wire above the entrance to the changing room. Feathery wings, also gold, extended from the gleaming prick's sides - the shop's guardian angel, I supposed. My body responded to the flying dildo with a rash-like prickle of heat.