Home seemed foreign to Cynthia on a weekday morning, a place where she wasn't supposed to be. The small apartment wore the air of a person awakened too soon, groggy and grumpy and put upon.
"Get used to it," she mumbled, shivering in her underwear at the kitchen table. She took another sip from the heavy ceramic mug that read, "Don't Ask Me, I Just Work Here," a memento of her recently ex-job.
Cynthia was going on 40. Her long brown hair was worn pulled back, showing off a handsome, if somewhat heavy face, she wore the best clothes she could afford, but they were old and too tight in some places, too loose in others.
All told, Cynthia was not the type of person one would normally choose for an office romance. She wasn't the self-assured, tight young college graduate, the naïve, even younger secretary, or the older, but still sexy vice president with the failing marriage.
She may not have had the body, the age, or the power to attract lovers, but Cynthia had the voice. And she had learned long ago that her voice was as sexual as any breast or butt or leg.
It was deep, but not too much so. Raspy, but not grating or harsh on the ear. It was a tingling, vibrating, resonant, breathy voice, reminiscent of Lauren Bacall or Kathleen Turner.
Without a doubt, it turned men on in ways her body alone never could.
It had been what had attracted her boss, what had kept him in her bed for eight months.
It couldn't, however, save her from being fired by him.
That had thrown her for a loop. Cynthia was so accustomed to maintaining the upper hand in her relationships that this single act by her boss had left her feeling powerless and bereft, not knowing quite what to do with herself.
So with a couple weeks' severance, a last lunch with the girls, and a parting, bad-dog-eyed good-bye from her ex, she left, with no prospects and fewer ideas of what to do next.
Another punishing draught of hot coffee, and she flipped the newspaper open, scanned the want ads. Down the columns, through administrative assistants, receptionists, secretaries. She circled those that appealed to her. There weren't many.
Her eyes drifted down the "Topless Entertainers Wanted," and she snorted, almost gagging on her coffee. She fondly remembered what Ralph in accounting had told her on her last day.
"Well, Cynthia," he had laughed, his voice dropping. "With your voice, I think you'd be able to find a great job in the phone sex business. You'd make a fortune. Hell, I'd call and let you talk dirty to me for $2 a minute."
"Ralph!" she said, her protest half-game, half-flattered.
Suddenly, though, cold and depressed and in her underwear on a Monday morning, Ralph's idea didn't seem so ridiculous. With the phone company contacts she'd gained through years as a receptionist, a little research on her part, and a little money borrowed from her retirement fund, she could swing this ... couldn't she?
Then something at the back of her mind whispered to her, in her mother's voice no less, exactly what she was thinking of doing.
Talking dirty to men on the phone. Not just men, but men she didn't know. And not just dirty, but explicit and ... well, X-rated.
You really aren't going to go through with this, her mother's voice chided.
There was really only one answer, only one way to tell.
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