A little favour

I stood up and Mary Ann stood with her back to mine. Kathleen had me stand on my toes. She looked at us and took out a measuring tape. She
took all sorts of measurements. “I think you’ll be perfect” she said. “Will you help us?” My inhibitions could not have been any lower if I
had been under anesthesia.

“Of course I’ll help,” I said without thinking.

Both girls laughed and jumped up and down. They smothered me with hugs and kisses. Kathleen took me by the hand and pulled me into one of the bedrooms. It had been turned into a sewing room. “I need you to be my dress dummy while I finish making Mary Ann’s wedding dress. She’s going out of town for the next few weeks, so I need somebody to wear it while I work on the hemline and put the finishing touches on it.”

“Wait a minute, I had no idea you wanted me to wear a dress. There’s no way I’m going to do that,” I said.

“Are you going back on your word? You already said you’d help us. What kind of man are you?” scolded Kathleen. Her eyes were giving me a warning.

I looked at Mary Ann and she looked sad. Mary Ann pleaded with me, “Please help us. It will mean so much to me. It will only take a little bit of time out of your day. I’ll even pay you for your help. How does $25 an hour sound?”

Kathleen said, “It will take a couple of hours a day, but it will need to be every day for the next few weeks.”

I asked, “Why can’t you just use a regular dress dummy?”

“The dress won’t hang right on a dummy, and if you wear it, I will be able to see how the dress looks when you move in it. It really makes a huge difference to have a person be the dress dummy.”

I knew I was beaten, “What do I need to do? I don’t want you to get any funny ideas about me if I agree to help you out.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll take care of everything,” Kathleen said. She had a look like the cat that ate the canary.