So a woman walks into a bar

The dining room had an immense, oaken table that would have stretched from one end of my apartment clear into my next door neighbor's. The setting looked antique. The silverware was actually silver, and the plates were china rimmed with gold.

Suddenly I remembered the bottle of wine in my hand. I walked into the kitchen and found an ice bucket. I opened her freezer, looking for some ice. Inside the freezer was a familiar-looking plastic bag.

"My god," I gasped. "She kept them!"

I didn't hear her walk up behind me. "Jared," she said, "I'm sorry. I should have told you."

"Why? Why did you..."

"I thought you might want them," she explained. "Even though they couldn't reattach your fingers, I thought you might want a souvenir."

What the hell was I going to do with them? Have them bronzed? Hang them up over my mantle? "No, thanks." I said. "You can get rid of them."

She looked embarrassed, and I was uncomfortable myself, so we didn't touch on the subject again. Dinner was awkward at first, but the bottle of wine helped us to relax. After a long meal and dissert, Pamela looked at me across the table and smiled that same devilish smile. "Oh Jared, I know we just met last night, but I have to tell you something... I want you inside of me."

I spent the night in her bed. The next morning, she called a caterer and had breakfast delivered. Wine and cheese, French bread, and omelets with caviar. The wine was an entirely different class than the bottle I brought over the night before. It was older than I was! Of course, she paid for it all. Like I said, I worked at a factory. I could barely afford fast food, let alone caviar.

Later that day, I had to go see a doctor to get a note for work. I told them I already had one, but they wanted a note from their doctor. Apparently mine wasn't good enough for them.

Two weeks went by, and I didn't hear from her. Maybe I was bad in bed, or maybe she was realized how little money I had. I didn't know what happened.

I had always been poor. My mother got pregnant in high school, and my father skipped town to avoid paying child support. My mother's parents abandoned her, too. They were religious folk, ashamed of what their daughter had done. So she worked three jobs, trying to support us both. She was a saint, and I absolutely adored her. But now, I felt like a failure. After all that time being poor, I had met a rich woman and ruined it. What had I done wrong?

I had run out of sick days, so I had to go back to work. Usually I spent my time at work like a zombie, not thinking about much of anything. But that day was different. I couldn't stop thinking about her.

After work, I went home and had a few drinks. I thought I was going to spend the night alone, but Pamela called me again. "Come on over," she said. "I get lonely in this big, old house, and I simply must to have you for dinner."

I sat down at the dining room table, and saw that it was a completely different set of gold-rimmed china. She brought in the biggest, juiciest steak I'd ever seen in my life. She had made herself a salad. She said she didn't want any steak, that she wasn't very hungry, but I kept catching her looking at me, licking her lips.

Finally she spoke. "I have a confession to make. I wanted to call you after that first night, but I was afraid."

"Why?" I asked. "Do I scare you?"

"I wasn't afraid of you. I was afraid of what you might say... What you would say when I told you my secret."

"Here we go," I thought. "She's married, or she's got some disease, or maybe a couple of kids."