Bliss by Hilary Fields Read Free Book Online Page B

I haven’t done any market research… Still.” Sera choked up. “Ah, hell, Maggie. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve this. It’s like Pauline is handing me my wildest dreams, gift-wrapped. She’s as much as said that, if I like it, the store’s mine to do with as I want. Who does that?”
    Pauline Wilde, that was who.
    â€œWhat’s the space used for now?” Maggie wanted to know. “I don’t think you ever told me what your aunt does for a living.”
    Color stained Sera’s normally ivory complexion. “Um, no… I didn’t.” There was no way to put this delicately, but damned if she wasn’t going to try. “Pauline was big in the seventies’ feminist movement. But, ah… she kind of took women’s lib in a different direction than a lot of her contemporaries. She had a bit of a following, back in the day. Started a movement that had about fifteen minutes of fame, and she’s been living off it ever since.”
    â€œA movement?” Margaret sounded curious.
    â€œYeah. It was called, um…” Serafina blushed harder, closed her eyes briefly, and blurted it out.
    â€œOurgasms.” She cringed, anticipating Maggie’s reaction. “It was supposed to be sort of a tie-in with Our Bodies, Ourselves , I think,” she rushed to explain. “Pauline is very much a believer in the importance of the female orgasm, and empowering her liberated sisters to have them on demand. Her followers were called the Pink Panters. ”
    A strange yipping sound came through the phone’s earpiece. After a moment, Serafina recognized it as her sponsor’s wild, uncontrollable laughter. “Oh my God, I remember that! I think I had one of her books, or maybe it was a lecture recorded on an old eight-track tape. It was right around the time The Joy of Sex came out, wasn’t it?”
    â€œYes, that's right. There were books and lectures and seminars and videos that, um, Pauline kind of… ‘starred’ in. Like, ah, ‘how-to’ videos.” Remembered embarrassment made Sera’s voice faint, and to cover it, she busied herself rinsing the cupcake pan in the deep, chipped porcelain sink. It wouldn’t do to leave crumbs and crusty pans around for her aunt to deal with when she got up in the morning, Sera told herself, running a worn linen dishrag around the pan’s cups and laying it in the dish drainer to finish drying. She’d probably plop herself down on the counter and end up getting gunk all over her voluminous skirt tails, trailing crumbs for the rest of the day. It wouldn’t be the first time.
    â€œSo what’s the store all about?” Margaret interrupted her mental nattering. “A feminist book shop or something?”
    â€œI’m not a hundred percent positive, but I think it might be some kind of a… sex shop, ” Sera confided in a pained whisper.
    More laughter sounded from faraway New York City, and Sera relaxed at the sound, picturing her sponsor leaning up against her own scarred kitchen counter, absently twirling the cigarette she never lit while she scratched through a junk-heaped drawer in search of a menu for some Vietnamese takeout.
    Margaret was about twenty-five years Serafina’s senior, and far less squeamish about all things bodily. It was one of the things that had first attracted Sera to Maggie when she’d seen her around in meetings—her no-apologies, no-prisoners self-confidence. “We used to pass those Pink Panter pamphlets around in study hall when I was a teenager and think we were so risqué,” Maggie reminisced, still chortling. “There was one called She Stoops to Climax that we particularly relished. Too bad our male counterparts weren’t nearly as interested in what your aunt had to teach. Ah, well.”
    â€œAh well, indeed,” Sera muttered, rolling her eyes. She was glad one of them could