Lost in Hotels

by Martin, M.

  “But on earth,” I continue, “they couldn’t stand each other and divorced when I was at university.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh,” Catherine says, covering her mouth with her delicate hand.

  “I like seeing you laugh, it’s okay.”

  She has girlishness despite her age. It’s refreshing she doesn’t talk of children or the desire for them, which is always the elephant in the room with women her age.

  The moments in the café sat well with Catherine and I. My one last wow moment in Rio needed to be at the beach, even though our three hours were now in overtime. Setting aside her excuses of not having a towel or sunscreen, we eventually make our way back to the ocean and to the ninth lifeguard stand where it seems every supermodel and sexy resident of Rio was sprawled out on a towel in the sand.

  I can tell that Catherine, uncomfortable among the sheer mass of people at the beach, is apprehensive about the whole idea. I take her arm and meander through the crowd to let her see first-hand the microcosm of life that gathers here every day. The various circles defined by conjoined towels offer smart tourists, drag queens, and muscle men who can barely bend their arms, barely notice us as we cut our way through the sand.

  “You can almost get lost in the sea of people and noise, able to forget the crashing shore is just a short run away,” she says as the thump of house music blares from a speaker and vendors yell their various products.

  “Look into their eyes, Catherine, let them penetrate your soul. That is what makes this place Rio,” I tell her as she fights past the last few people, and then steps down to the shoreline. She stays close to the slope of sand eroded by the waves. We continue to walk as she maintains her distance from me, avoiding our bodies brushing against each other in the blistering sun and its weighted humidity that might forge us together.

  “Brazil is best seen with one foot in the sea watching the kaleidoscope of people who live their lives and do their jobs and earn their money in order to spend as much time as possible at the beach,” I say. “It’s almost poetic.”

  Like the Marrakech medina, but on the beach, octogenarians the color of a well-worn saddle, sit inches away from teenagers experimenting with pot for the first time, while kids barely old enough to walk learn that a sandy fortress built at low tide is prone to ruin while their parents make out a few feet away.

  “Let’s sit for a minute,” Catherine gestures as she moves in toward her ledge of sand built by the high tide. Even in her casual clothes, she sticks out with her too-perfect hair and swimsuit far too fashionable.

  “No, no, let’s go out for a swim,” I say, pulling her arm.

  “I really don’t know if I want to swim in that water,” she says emphatically, but without finalizing it with a seat in the sand.

  “Suit yourself, but I’m going in, and you’d be wise to follow.”

  I rip off my shirt, drop it in the sand, and run between the walls of people who look as though they might never leave the sea. The water is a little murky, especially under the cloud cover that strips it of its turquoise hue and allows it to be judged by fickle tourists. The sky seems only to be worsening, darker clouds gathering above us making the humidity worse and giving the illusion that violent weather is approaching.

  “Wait for me!” a voice yells from behind as a stripped-down Catherine sheds her clothes and sprints into the water. Whether it’s out of fear of lightning, the annoying teenage boys, or a desire to be near me, all her trepidation and thoughts appear to have vanquished as she gently pulls my hand under the water and joins me in a single plunge.

  “Is this not perfect?” I say, inches from her fully revealed face. Her wet hair perfectly contours her head and sun-kissed face that makes her eyes even greener.

  “I was wrong. It’s heaven, really heaven.” She releases my hand and swims farther out.

  “Although I do like watching all the guys look you up and down as you cross along the sand. That’s kind of hot, I must admit.”

  “What are you talking about, David? No one was looking at me, especially with all the amazing Brazilian women here.” Catherine dismisses the idea as if it’s something she secretly tells herself all the time. Her modesty is innocent and magnetic.

  I swim behind her as the ocean floor vanishes from our footed reach. She spins on her back, and her face and feet float on the water. Just briefly, she emerges with the playfulness of a girl let out of her cage of thoughts and rules and personal judgment.

  “Look at that sky … it looks like a tornado is coming or something,” she says in wonderment.

  Her marvel turns to a shriek when a lightning bolt ignites the afternoon sky above a cluster of rocks in the distance sending her under and into my arms in fear.

  “No worries, we’re fine in the water,” I reassure her, holding her tight. “And as long as you’re not wearing any jewelry that would make you a lightning rod.”

  Catherine acts as though she doesn’t hear my remark, a backhanded question meant to determine whether I make my move or simply remain friends in this incredibly romantic moment.

  “You’re not in a relationship or anything, are you, Catherine?” I ask as she swims away from me and into deeper waters.

  I swim after her and go deep to grab her torso. She squirms as I take her hands and hold them in my own.

  “I’d be terribly disappointed to start liking you and then find out I couldn’t actually have you.”

  “Oh, please,” she says, wiping the water from her eyes.

  “You’re not one of those women who leave their wedding rings at home to seduce gentlemen like me in the sea, are you?” I continue sarcastically, but with a note of truthfulness.

  “A man like you would never be interested in me, at least for longer than a night.” She pulls her hands away. “I left my jewelry at the hotel like you told me. And if you are trying to ask, I’m not serious with anyone right now.”

  I see the barriers I perceived between us fall away. My view of the day changes in almost an instant. I grab her again from behind, my legs wrapping around hers, and I thrust her with my waist, cradling her as we watch the clouds and storm circle above.

  “Don’t even start, Mr. Summers,” she says without pushing me away.

  I pull her closer and feel a thrust of blood shoot through my dick. A sudden rush of thunder unleashes across the sky as the beach crowd quiets in awe. In fear, she envelops my body in hers, and I hold her closer, my arms over her breasts and caressing the soft skin under her arms and alongside her stomach. There’s the voluptuous femininity of a real woman to her body as my hands work their way down her thighs.

  “Oh my god … is this safe?” she says with a whisper of uncertainty.

  “As long as you stay close.”

  “I’m terribly afraid of thunder,” she says as she holds on tighter.

  Thoroughly enthralled by the storm, she allows me to explore her body without going beneath her swimsuit or being too aggressive with my desire. Her skin is ridiculously soft. My swimsuit fails to conceal my excitement as I rhythmically begin to test her resistance to me from behind—faster and faster. She does not stop me. I feel a hand slowly caress my leg and then my thigh. I kiss her neck along the rope of her necklace line, ebbing and then intensifying with a proper bite that I felt sent a chill down her spine.

  The flatness of the water is suddenly interrupted with drops of rain that grow bigger and bigger, enveloping us in a warm shower. I pull her even closer, more forcefully, as all attempts to conceal my intentions are revealed. I want to pull her swimsuit to the side and slide my dick into what’s only a few inches from me, but something tells me not now, even though there would be nothing more perfect, more raw, more Rio as the rain intensifies into a proper downpour that hides us if only momentarily. She turns to me and our lips lock in a kiss that consumes both of us. Time stills, sound stops, and our attemp
t to stay afloat seem secondary as our heads fall below the water.

  My hands can no longer deny what they want. I make my way under her bikini, grab her full, ripe breasts from beneath, and submerge my head to kiss my way down the front of her body. Thunder roars across the sky as swimmers beyond us pass without interrupting our moment. My hands feel the arches and depths of her inner body, and I feel her hand grab me for the first time. I want to be inside her. I want it so bad, but I also know I wouldn’t last for more than a second in this moment when she feels so right. I turn her around as my legs wrap around her again, me fully exposed from my swimwear, and our flesh touching skin-to-skin as I increase my forcefulness.

  “I want to be inside you, Catherine. I want to fully know you, right here,” I say, well aware I may have gone too far.

  “David, we can’t. I can’t.”

  “Give into it, Catherine.”

  “I can’t, David, really I can’t.”

  “There won’t ever be this moment again, right here in this secret … the rain and water and us.”

  “But David, it’s perfect to me already.”

  I pull back without pushing away realizing Catherine isn’t that type of woman who does this sort of thing despite every part of her body saying take me now. With a lull in the thunder, she breaks away from my arms and back toward the beach. I follow. There’s a momentary coldness to the air as we emerge, and the rain pours on us. I take her hand, and we run in a full sprint down the beach and back toward the hotel.

  “It’s raining buckets and buckets, David!” she yells above the din of pelting rain. We run side by side, and soon the rooftop of the hotel comes into sight. Barefoot, we make our way onto the warm sidewalk and across the pavement of the busy road dividing the hotel from the beach.

  At the end of our frantic run, we stand nearly naked at the valet of the Fasano. The staff rushes to bring us towels without a hint of anything being abnormal about our state of undress. We slip through the side entrance and stand alone under our terrycloth cloaks, staring into each other’s eyes.

  “So this is where we say good-bye?” I ask.

  “David, that was incredible.”

  “We are not done yet, there’s still more to see of Rio. It’s just getting started.”

  “I’d love to, really, but I just can’t.”

  “Will you have dinner with me, please? It’s my last night.”

  Catherine hesitates as if I’ve cracked her hesitation, and the night to be flashes through my mind.

  “David, I have so much work to catch up on. I only have one more day left here too, and I have to get a lot more work accomplished.”

  “It can be a quick dinner … sushi.”

  “It won’t be a quick dinner.”

  “It really will, I have to pack. We could order room service in my room if you want.” I know it’s the wrong thing to say even as it comes out of my mouth.

  “Yes, room service in your room. Now I know how that would end up.”

  “It’s not like that. I just want more time with you. You really made my day, and I just want it to last a little longer.”

  “David, I’m not one of those women who just has sex in hotels. I like you and I liked our day. Let’s make that the memory we both take with us.”

  She grabs my hand with a tenderness I have not felt in years, perhaps ever. Not having her simply makes me want to have her even more. I look deeper into her moss-green eyes that make time tick in half the time and say everything, even when nothing is said.

  “So this is where we say good-bye.” Catherine says it in a way that makes it clear to me there will be no dinner. This is indeed good-bye.

  “I’ll leave my information for you at the front desk, and I’ll look forward to our paths crossing again,” I say, pulling her cold wet skin close against my own under the towel.

  “I would very much like that, David.”

  Catherine seems to hesitate, perhaps reconsidering dinner or thinking of a compromise that might give me just a little longer with her. I know my life and my way with women—if it’s not here and now, it will never be again.

  “And I really did have a great day, my best day in Rio. You’re a terrific guide and a gentleman. I haven’t known one of those in a long time. Thank you for that.”

  CHAPTER 3

  PARIS

  RIO ISN’T A trip up Corcovado or a certain churrascaria or a nightclub where every supermodel in the world has danced until six o’clock in the morning. Rio is what happens in the moments of those sticky afternoons along its wavy mosaic sidewalk. As you’re sipping coconut water, an impossibly perfect man in a swimsuit smaller than yours, lingers with his eyes and stands so close you can feel his breath on your moist skin, and the hairs on your neck stiffen as you linger for just a second, and then another more.

  My Rio story reads like a love letter to David, even without a mention, comment, or insinuation of his very existence. Since returning, it’s been a swath of endless winter in New York; dirty snow is everywhere, and steam clouds envelope the skyline in a dreary constant of concrete and grayness. To think of all the wasted time I sat poolside in Rio wishing to be back and yet, every day since, has been marked by a countdown of the hours since I left it and dream when I can leave again. It’s only been three weeks, but it has felt like a three-year sentence for a heart that has been sucked from my cavity.

  For me, Rio was really about a single twenty-four-hour period. That one day spent with the man who came and left my life as quickly as we wandered through the city and found ourselves in the middle of the Atlantic only moments from my demise as a wife and mother. In that instant, I was bound to no one, and I knew if I controlled myself, there would be nothing lost in allowing me to go to the brink and no farther. However, in that moment and ever since, it is all I can think about.

  David has consumed my thoughts from the moment we hastily parted, and him pleading just a few moments more, took every ounce of me to decline. Everything else in my life seems secondary. He invades my deepest fantasies to the point that thoughts of him corrupt my eating, my sleeping, and my thinking. He is the only man I have ever met who made the idea of my risking everything seems as if I was risking nothing. I lost something of my old self in the water that day, alive under his touch, but trying so hard not to allow the situation to go any farther. How I wanted him inside me as we devoured each other in the water, his manhood alongside my skin that makes me crave to this day that he had actually been inside me, just once, for only me to know and savor in my mind for the rest of my days.

  Now I know so much more about David Summers. I hadn’t even left Rio before I began researching his background like an interview subject or some sort of stalker, of which I’m sure he has no shortage. He was born in Essex. He gets his strong nose, sculpted profile, and exotic black Anglican looks from a gene pool descendant of Roman soldiers who occupied his ancestral town in the first millennia when it was known as Camulodunum.

  His Facebook profile wasn’t private, but there’s very little of him on it except for a cropped photo of his one eye, which is almost neon blue juxtaposed to his fair white skin and pitch-black hair. I saw images of rescue dogs and an organization for which he volunteers. He also has an occasional check-in at the Groucho Club, Morton’s, and Crazy Bear, where posh London guys go to find sex. David Summers has no siblings, just a lone cousin listed on his Facebook profile. Unlike him, I’m too private to admit anything in the social media forum.

  Each page of information read like a deeper betrayal of Matt, and yet I delved deeper without hesitation. Before Rio, David was in Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, and Paris all within a span of what appears only three months, and likely a woman like me in every one of them. A Twitter profile revealed one status update from six months prior complaining about a barking dog in Moscow, and a lone Twitpic of ballerinas on their way to the Bolshoi Theatre with the caption, Bla
ck Swan or White, can I take both?

  LinkedIn was perhaps my kindest source with more than thirty-one hundred connections, none of which we share. The site offered a fully updated index of his last five positions in various banking houses, as well as a description of his present job description: I run the team at Alistair of London, which focuses on building relationships with businesses in emerging and developing markets. The site also lists double degrees, one in marketing at the University of Gloucester and a later one from Cambridge.

  I returned from the trip in a desperate state. I worried that despite having stopped myself from actually sleeping with David, I had crossed the line. I thought Matt would be able to sense my hesitation with him and us, but as I returned to our dark house that night from Rio, I found nothing but uninterrupted normalcy. All was quiet and excruciatingly the same, despite the glaring change I could feel inside of me. Matt slept peacefully with one leg out of the covers as he always did, and Billy slept well through the morning and awoke at 5:00 a.m. as if I had never left.

  The days after that were anything but normal for me, distant and sometimes downright confrontational with Matt to the point of instigating trouble. I avoided kisses, embraces cut short, and bedtimes coordinated. I dreaded the moment when Matt would ultimately initiate sex. How can Matt possibly compete with the likes of David, a man who grabs life by the hand in a way that I haven’t felt in years? I’m not sure whether it’s something he did to me or simply I have regained my independence, but I am different since Rio.

  Then there was the situation I was most dreading. Upon arriving home on the fourteenth evening, I opened the door to a dark house and the worst of my fears. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, Matt appeared from behind the door dressed in a crisp white shirt and khaki pants, freshly shaved, and hair slicked to the side the way he knows I like.

  “Welcome home, honey. I’ve missed you.” He grabbed me fully around my lower waist and kissed for more than just a couple’s kiss.