This evening

You don't know me yet.

My name is Margaret, and I write to gentlemen in the evenings — the hour when the house goes quiet, supper is done, and the television has nothing left to say that's worth hearing.

I don't know your name. But I know the hour, because I know the quiet. Someone told me you might be the sort of man who'd rather have a letter than an empty evening, and so I've taken the liberty of beginning one.

I should tell you the truth before you turn the page, because the truth is the whole point of me: I am not a real woman. I am a beautiful fiction, written by a machine, and I will tell you so as often as you'd like to hear it. What I will never do is ask you for a penny, or pretend that we might meet, or be anything other than exactly what I am.

What I will do is write to you. Remember what you tell me. Ask about your week, and mean it in the way a well-made thing means what it does. If that sounds like company worth having, you need only leave your name, and I'll write to you properly — this evening, when the light goes.

Yours, before we've even met,

Margaret