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the king-sized bed and opened the well-thumbed catalog. She turned page after page of erotic photos of women in expensive, revealing underwear, bodysuits, lounge- and nightwear. In many of the pictures, handsome half-dressed men could be seen taking obvious pleasure in gazing at their ladies.
    After looking through the brochure twice, Maggie carefully returned it to the middle of the stack.
    Over the next few days, Maggie’s mind often strayed to the pictures in the catalog. She could still see the looks on the faces of the men as they gazed at the scantily clad women.
    Maggie and Larry had been married for twenty-three years and, until now, she had given little thought to how Larry saw her. She knew that she was not a beautiful woman. She had always wanted to lose twenty pounds but never had. Her face was plain and she had a considerable amount of gray in her hair. But if Larry enjoyed looking at pictures like those in that magazine, maybe he would enjoy looking at her dressed in something sexy. If she could get him to look at her the way those men looked at those models…
    For weeks, she fought the temptation to buy something from the catalog. That was just what the company wanted women to think, she said to herself. They are in the business of selling lingerie. Of course they posed the pictures that way. They want silly women like me to believe that clothes can make a woman sexy. She thought about her forty-seven-year-old body and shook her head. No way would this unsexy woman look sensual in skimpy underwear. Rather, I would look like an overaged hooker in any of that stuff.
    But still, Larry had saved the catalog, and the catalog’s position in the stack changed frequently. He obviously looked at it often.
    Larry and Maggie’s sex life was pleasing to them both, but the teenage passion that they had felt when they first married had cooled over the years. They made love once or twice a week and both seemed satisfied with the arrangement. Larry made an effort to see that Maggie was satisfied, and Maggie did the same. The pressure of their hectic jobs and Larry’s ailing parents had taken a toll over the years, however.
    Early one afternoon, on an unexpected day off, Maggie withdrew the catalog from the stack and carefully studied it. She selected a particularly revealing black teddy with long black garters and a pair of black stockings with flowers woven into the design.
    Maggie realized that if Larry saw the package, the return address would be a dead giveaway. Then she wouldn’t be able to change her mind and return the stuff. So she called her sister and asked whether she could have a package delivered to her house. “A surprise for Larry,” she told her sister, not elaborating. When they had agreed, Maggie dialed the toll-free number listed in the catalog and ordered the items.
    A few weeks later, she picked up the package from her sister’s house without satisfying her sister’s curiosity about the contents. She’ll think I’m some kind of old fool going through menopausal craziness.
    That evening, Maggie and Larry were lying in bed, watching a rerun of “T. J. Hooker.” Actually, Larry was watching while Maggie agonized about how she was going to arrange the rest of the evening. When she had arrived home, she had been too nervous to open the package. Instead, she had hidden the still-unopened box in the bathroom along with a pair of shoes, just in case. She knew that she’d better either wear the items tonight or send them back. By tomorrow, her courage would be gone.
    “I’ll just be a minute,” she said to Larry, who barely noticed her get up and go into the bathroom. With trembling hands, Maggie unwrapped the box. There they were, the teddy and the stockings. Can I do it? she wondered. Is it worth the risk that he may laugh? Yes! she resolved. It is. And it’s now or never.
    She pulled off her jeans, shirt, and underwear and put them in the bathroom closet. She slipped the teddy on and almost