Lost in Hotels

by Martin, M.

  “Shouldn’t you be strutting around in your Speedo? It’s Italy after all,” she says, unable to break free of the negativity that I choose not to address.

  “That was earlier in the day; I’ve transitioned to my casual evening look.” I wave my hand toward my ultra-thin trousers and white V-neck T-shirt.

  “Stand up, let’s see,” Catherine says like a demanding schoolteacher on the first day of class.

  I comply, rising from my entirely uncomfortable chair and hover above her as she takes another sip of wine, leaving behind a slight lipstick residue on the rim of the glass.

  “There you go.” I rise in front of her, walking forward almost to the point of straddling her legs. “Like that?”

  I hover above her as our inner and outer legs touch.

  “Take off your shirt,” she commands, almost void of emotion.

  I comply, pulling the back of the neck over my head, and adjusting my belt a bit lower on my pants. The breeze sends a chill up my spine, my body eager for what is to come.

  “Tell me what you want,” she says.

  “Tell you what I want? Tell me what you want?” I say with a cutting flirtation.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking about right now,” she says with a heartfelt lingering.

  “I’m thinking about sliding my hands up that skirt and sticking my hands inside you, and then pulling them out and putting them back in before taking you in my mouth.”

  “Take off your shoes.”

  I kick them off with ease despite the laces and stand barefoot in front of her.

  “Now back up a little and take off your pants.”

  I take a step back.

  “Farther,” she says as I take another short step back, not wanting to be outside of her any longer.

  I take off my pants and stand there in briefs, well aware that portions of the hotel can see inside our balcony but hoping the view distracts from what’s in front of them.

  “Everything.”

  She barks the order as I move closer to the covered trellis to obscure the erection that flops from my white underwear that I fling in front of her. I wait for her to fall to her knees or jump to her feet; instead, she leans back in her chair.

  “Touch it,” she says like an innocent girl playing dominatrix, calling my dick it instead of some harsher, sexy, sleazy word.

  I grab my dick around the base, which sends a jolt through it as I pull back the skin and then slide my hands a few times back and forth before stopping.

  “Why are you stopping? I didn’t tell you to stop.”

  “I’ve been jerking off nonstop for the past six weeks; it’s sort of the last thing I want to do right now.”

  “What do you want to do?” she asks.

  “I want to take my hands around your neck and rub my head around yours, smelling your hair as I send my hands through it, and tasting your mouth with my tongue.”

  She takes off her blouse and then her bra.

  “And then I want to take my mouth to your breasts, biting them ever so softly as I arch your back with my hands. I want to smell your skin, taste its salty flavor with my tongue as my nose works its way from your shoulder to your hands that I take to my mouth and suck each finger one by one.”

  I stand there motionless, confessing the confines of all my thoughts and desires of her during the time since we’ve last seen each other.

  “And then I would push you on your back and try to convey to you physically the way I feel about you emotionally, inside and out, every day since we met.”

  Catherine unzips her skirt and removes her black lace underwear in front of me in almost a single motion. She falls to the ground in front of me and takes me inside her mouth. Her movements portray a woman fully succumbing to me, like love’s warrior laying down her defense in front of me that results in such immediate pleasure. She goes at it with the rigor of a woman who wants nothing more than to please me, and I willingly accept. She works me back and forth in an increasing rhythm; I stare down and watch her movements that aim to satiate me and send me into a thundering crescendo. With most women, I’m unable to cum from oral sex alone, but thoughts of being so intimately inside her sends me to another place. Without pause or hesitation to take my time, I explode in Catherine’s unyielding mouth. I gasp in pleasure and bend until the continued sensation is too much to bear, and I pull away from her mouth.

  We emerge from the hotel showered and connected as a couple once more. There’s a connectedness between couples after sex, especially when you know that special someone won’t disappear at the end. Our hands meet effortlessly, conjoined with the occasional glance to the other that makes everything else in the world seem secondary. We are both dressed uncharacteristically casual. The wind is gone, and an oppressive humidity has set in under a cloudy sky that’s thicker than earlier in the evening.

  We make our way down to Duomo Square, its gray-and-black marble stones and still-unpretentious cafés buzz with a menagerie of tourists and young locals gathered near a wrought iron edge that looks over the sea, striped this evening in a wide swath of moonlight. Summer evenings are the most social time in the Italian culture; grandmothers gather around the more comfortable benches away from the main square as their graying gents play bocce or chess at small parks below the cobblestone promenade. Teenagers fondle each other in the darker corners of closed department store entrances, and singles flock into a handful of bars and restaurants in a scene that’s like a microcosm of your life’s past and future visually spelled out in front of you within the few short blocks.

  The following morning arrives too soon for Catherine, who lingers in bed as I take my run, which today is free of the many distractions that have slowed my pace of previous days. I return to a still dark room and Catherine sleeping on her stomach on one side of the bed, not sprawled in the center as I had expected. I’ve allowed her to sleep as long as possible, but alas, the day must begin. I heave open the weighty drapery and allow the unfettered sunshine that’s retreated from under the earlier cloud cover to enter our room. I kiss the back of her neck to wake her, tracing my way gently down her back. I tuck a cappuccino cup next to her as her naked body stretches to wake.

  Catherine is a silent morning person, and I leave her in the chosen stillness while I get ready to shower and pack for the weekend. The luggage is tedious on the road, separating what I need from the larger Tumi bag that will stay behind and wait for me at the hotel. We cross paths just outside the shower, she concealed behind a thick white robe and slippers. She watches my body more than most girlfriends I’ve had do. At first, it was a turn-on, but now it makes me think something’s wrong or she’s analyzing me in her deep Freudian stare that looks away when I catch her.

  She’s been awake for thirty minutes, and slowly the words come from her mouth. She asks about the day and the journey before us as we make our way out of the room. I am dressed in black and white and she is in a sexy white dress with a scarf wrapped around her head, which reminds me of the day I met her in Rio. I had no idea this is where I would be and who I would be with all these months later.

  She leaves a wake of turned heads as we make our way through the lobby; even the Swiss girl at the reception desk cannot help taking notice as Catherine rounds through the area and toward the street where a brick of an old Mercedes S-Class awaits us in a plume of diesel smoke.

  The hotel car leaves much to be desired, but inside you’d never know it wasn’t the newest of models; the driver likely washes it inside and out every day. Two water bottles sit in the folds behind the driver and passenger seat. Catherine grabs hold of one and takes it to her mouth as I think to myself that I would never do such a thing not knowing who might have touched the top. I dare not school her; instead, I grab her hand and take in the descending horizon of Taormina and onto the swifter highway that leads to the north.

  I’ve told her very little of
the journey in front of us. About an hour on the highway leads us to a small turnout and a road toward the sea where on the plateau a blue whale of a helicopter sits on the grassy heliport with the words Air Panarea in faded white print on its side and a lone pilot standing next to it.

  “Wait, is that for us?” she asks in a mix of excitement and nervousness.

  “It is. I figured it beats the dinghy that stops at every island.” My own excitement is fully engaged.

  “I’ve never been in one before. Oh no, now I’m slightly nervous,” she says in her girlish honesty.

  “You’ll love it, plus, it’s all over water so not much to be afraid,” I say while looking at the rather aged flying aircraft. It looks to be a good twenty years old with window tinting now half-peeled away and a worn metal door covering the motor that looks as though it’s been pulled off and screwed on far too many times. It’s a seamless transition from car to helicopter, and Catherine enters without hesitation. I tip the driver and make sure our two bags fit in the rear hatch. The pilot takes Catherine’s heavier bag and places it on the seat next to him.

  “We’ll put that up here to balance the helicopter. I am Amerigo; I will be your pilot for the short flight.”

  He continues in surprisingly fluid and articulate English explaining the headphones to Catherine as well as the basic physics of how a helicopter works. I had no idea it was harder to fly a helicopter than a plane, not something you exactly want to hear on your first flight, but Catherine’s face seems nonetheless engaged. He secures his door hatch with a strong pull and then a stretchy rope to secure it as I try to direct Catherine’s eyes to the Aeolian Islands in the distance. The propellers thump to a steady purr, the chopper surges forward and to the side, and then up into the air.

  Catherine holds my hand tight and then tighter as the chopper glides through the air with an occasional air pocket picked up from the afternoon heat that bounces us closer together. There’s simplicity to helicopter flying, far beyond da Vinci’s primitive sketches of vertical flight and closer to what it might be like as a lonely bird soaring across the water. Catherine looks over with her bulky headset.

  “I love you,” she whispers unexpectedly as our eyes meet.

  “You mean me?” the pilot says with a baritone chuckle.

  “Yes, you too. But only as long as we’re airborne,” Catherine laughs.

  I look back at Catherine and mouth, “I love you, too.” Her words catch me by surprise, but the moment couldn’t be more appropriate. It’s the first time I’ve said that to a woman in a very long time. She leans in with her soft hair on my shoulder, and we stare off into the distance as two large landmasses come into sight. One more dramatic than the other, volcanic Stromboli is a singular silhouette that appears identical to the volcano you would draw as a child, complete with an omnipresent billow of smoke that hovers around its head.

  “That is Stromboli ahead,” the pilot says as we look on. “You watch close, and you see smoke every hour or so, like clock,” he continues, as the sight alone is mesmerizing, intimidating even at this distance.

  “Do people live on Stromboli?” she asks.

  “Yes, it is very famous in Italy. Roberto Cavalli and Dolce Gabbana both have homes. But you need be careful, volcano very active. They all have yachts if they need to get away fast. Most people not so lucky.”

  “But you have a helicopter; that’s even better,” I add.

  “Yes, I guess that true. On the right here, is Panarea. We will circle and then land against the wind.”

  Panarea is larger than I expected. It’s like a mountain topped with a high peak and collapsed lush green edges that descend along a terrain dotted in houses and farms that touch the sea with its jagged islands and rock formations that humble even Faraglioni off Capri.

  “It’s incredible,” Catherine says from her headset clogged in static. She leans above the window for a better view.

  Her head is framed by an aura of sun beating over the crystal blue sea as the white water can almost be felt crashing on the rocky shore. The helicopter finds its target, circles above the heliport, and descends as if pulled by a rope to the ground as it touches ever so gently onto the grassy pad.

  “That was incredible,” Catherine says in a sort of thank-you tone. The swoop of the propellers turned off and glided to a stop. We unbuckled and looked at a small converted golf cart parked at the edge of the grass.

  “Welcome to Panarea. I’m Giuseppe and will be taking you to Hotel Raya,” he yells from his seat in front of the cart emblazoned with the hotel logo. The lone pilot carries our luggage to the rear seat without help from the hotel driver or me.

  Catherine takes a seat in the second row, her scarf wrapped tightly around her head to shield from the unyielding sun that’s sent a bead of sweat down from the top of my head, along my neck behind the ear, down my spine, and through the rear of my pants.

  “So we go to the hotel now, is that good?” the driver says without much of a good-bye to the pilot.

  He zips away and the view of distant Stromboli and the jagged formations disappear along a shaded residential street that becomes more commercial with a series of terra-cotta-colored inns and family restaurants arranged on vine-covered terraces. Scooters whiz past us with a mix of shirtless beach-bound teenagers who double and sometime triple up on the rear behind speeding grandmothers and impatient fathers with cigarettes dangling precariously from their tanned faces.

  “How many people live in Panarea?” Catherine addresses the driver.

  “Right now, only about three hundred, but there are many visitors, so I would say somewhere closer to one thousand,” he replies.

  “That’s not very many; it must be terribly quiet in winter.”

  “Quiet and beautiful. The ferries let you get away to Lipari and the busier islands, but here it’s like a phantom town.”

  “When was the island first settled?” Catherine inquires further as the alleyways of the central town get narrower past small grocery stores with windows of pasta boxes, dated perfumery, and the type of shops frequented by locals rather than tourists. The streets are car free, and so is the island, maintaining an otherworldly simplicity that comes across in the calm faces of passing locals.

  “It is very old, but it was really the Romans who came, and then later, it was occupied by pirates who made life terrible for those living here.”

  “Pirates?”

  “Yes, pirates and ships that would come and stay the winter in village houses, eat all their food, and take their women.”

  “I hope they weren’t Londoners,” I interject.

  “No, mostly North Africans and from the East. Very bad people.”

  The view opens as we arrive on the harbor. There is a bit more life along a single row of more commercial shops along the main port adjacent to a short, deserted seafront and incline in the distance where Hotel Raya rises.

  The hotel is a simple cubist house in pinkish stucco framed in an all-white architecture that spreads out from the roofline. There are no manicured trees or grassy landscaping at the entrance; instead, a simple staircase descends from the cobblestone street with a sleeping cat perched atop the tenth step painted gleaming white.

  Catherine is enveloped in the moment, absorbing every detail with her eyes and scribbling it down on a small notepad she carries with her every time we check into a hotel. I enjoy watching her, the lines in her forehead tensing when she sees something that piques her interest, whether good or bad, and then relaxing as she focuses back on her notes.

  “Hello there, you must be David Summers,” says an older woman inside a small office just up the main corridor leading into the hotel. My eyes play tricks on me in the direct sunlight making the interior spaces look far darker as all I can do against the light is look straight through the lobby and at Stromboli in the distance.

  “Yes, that would be me,” I say
attempting to remove my sunglasses.

  “I am Martina, this is my hotel, and I wish you both welcome,” she says, extending her hand that’s cold and soft to the touch. I feel a slight prick of well-manicured nails that touch my inner wrist. She smells of an Italian woman, a scent that evolves over a lifetime from that almost musky, sexy fragrance of a young woman to a sort of matronly floral scent of this likely grandmother.

  “And I am Catherine. I’ve read so much about you.”

  Martina’s eyes widen, happy or curious that someone new recognizes her as more than just front-of-the-house help.

  “Oh, is that so? What have you read exactly?” she says coyly.

  “Well, that you came to this deserted island in the sixties and built this hotel that is now as iconic as the island itself,” Catherine explains.

  “That is very nice, but I am just a woman trying to run a business despite these Italians that make this place impossible to do business.”

  “But you seem to be doing very well … I mean, look at this place,” I add.

  “Yes, but no thanks to them. They should build me a monument, but they don’t respect women, and they don’t like people from the outside. Hold on, let me finish up here, and I will take you to your room.”

  Martina has the command skills of a more efficient Napoleon, ordering her staff around in briefly punctuated Italian that probably translates far harsher than it sounds. Catherine walks ahead as I poke my head inside the small dining room and into the open-air lobby lined in white tiles and framed by a beam ceiling and a 220-degree view of a rugged seascape capped by architectural rock formations that look like Giacometti molded them. On the terrace, steamer chairs and loungers are vacant except for one with a single man sitting lost between a book and a cocktail.

  “So let’s go … where is your woman?” Martina barks.

  “Catherine, love. Are you ready?” I yell ahead and see her silhouette turn back in our direction.

  “You need to watch a woman who leaves your side in search of the unknown,” Martina whispers pointing a long finger with a glossy red nail at me.