RANSVESTIA

wore to her cousin's wedding, and on into the dark bedroom. His hand found the light switch and the room grew bright. The top of the dresser was deep with cosmetics and colognes. On a chair, mixed together, were some of their clothes. Near the foot of the bed, resting on its side, was one of Maggie's shoes.

David moved forward, circled the shoe and sat on the foot of the bed. His eye still on the black open-toed shoe his memory pricked him. His sitting there alone looking at her shoe brought some- thing else to mind. A film. A film he and Maggie had seen when they were away at college. Viridiana it was called and although his memory of the work was sketchy, one clear image did come through. That of a man whose wife had died, going through a trunk holding her clothes and holding in his hand, if David remembered right, a white satin shoe. It was an effort on the man's part to keep his wife with him, to remain part of her and while David's separation from Maggie was far less traumatic, the concept intrigued him. And from that filmic image, and something else in David's past, was born an idea for what to do after dinner.

He did the dishes by crushing the paper cup he had drunk from and throwing it and the aluminum dinner tray into the garbage. Next he retired to the bathroom and took a long hot shower. After the shower, naked and refreshed, David walked into the bedroom and stood at its center. He reached out and pulled open a dresser drawer containing Maggie's stockings and under things. He took a pair of red nylon panites and slipped them on. David was aware of an increase in his breathing rate and his mind went back to a time when he was twelve and left alone on a long August afternoon. As he pulled a pair of Maggie's coffee colored pantyhose over his almost hairless legs he remembered wandering into his older sister's bedroom on that distant summer day and the excitement he felt in his young heart as he, for no reason he could fathom beyond a tremendous and irresistible desire, began dressing in his sister's chemise and white party dress.

From the drawer he lifted one of Maggie's underwire up-lift bras and put it on. He filled out the cups with two more panties. It had never occured to him before now just how similarly built he and his wife were; both slim hipped, thin and about five foot seven.

David moved to the sliding closet and moving aside some dresses and slacks he found what he was looking for, the dress Maggie had worn to her cousin's wedding. It was a short sleeved front buttoning