Room 415

by Edward Lee

  “That’s so great! ” the girl squealed.

  Flood was shocked at himself. Several couples sitting on beach towels applauded.

  “Well...I guess he had it coming,” Flood said.

  “It’s about time somebody cleaned that guy’s clock,” a man in a fold up chair said, and a beautiful woman next to him, in a raving pink thong, added, “He’s out here every day, running his gutter-mouth, and staring at people.”

  The remarks made Flood feel better for his violence. The girl in the fishnet took his arm. “Come on. Let me buy you a drink.”

  “No, really, that’s not necessary—”

  “Come on,” she insisted.

  Now he felt self-conscious, ludicrous even in his parrot-green trucks and stark-white skin.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That guy was creeping me out.”

  “I can imagine. I’m not a violent person but sometimes—I don’t know—I have no tolerance for sloppy, dirty, loud-mouthed drunks.”

  “This is usually a nice, low-key beach. People come out here to mind their own business and have a nice time, but every now and then you’ll run into some guy like that who ruins things for everyone.” Her right arm clasped Flood’s left, while her fingers smoothed over his forearm. It almost seemed affectionate, and that titillated him since he’d had no genuine affection for a very long time, or...perhaps not ever. Even during his marriage, when it seemed stable, he knew now that Felicity’s affection had been a play-act. Her only real affection she’d saved for the men she was seeing behind his back.

  Nevertheless, this... was nice.

  In his swim trunks he could feel his cock filling with desire and blood. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach.

  “Well, I’m just really grateful for what you did,” she was going on. “I work this beach sometimes twice a month, and I’m always running into that guy.”

  Flood was distracted. Impulse kept dragging his eyes to catch glimpses of the net-covered breasts, the bare nipples extruding . Oh, Jesus, this is crazy... But what had she said? “Maybe that guy learned his lesson, that if he’s gonna act like an ass, sometimes he’s gonna get decked. But what did you mean when you said—”

  She obviously already knew the question; perhaps the remark was her lead-in. “I work this beach, and others. Resort areas, tourist beaches, and especially conventions. I’m a tour guide. My name’s Carol. What’s yours?”

  A tour guide? “Jake,” Flood answered her. “I’m a computer accessory salesman from Seattle.”

  She giggled, a vocal gesture drenched in sex. She stopped, turned, and ran a hand down his white arm. “Believe me, I could tell you’re not from here. Be careful, you’ll burn fast.”

  Honey, I’m already burning.

  “So I won’t jack you around with the usual games. I’m a call-girl, Jake, one of the higher-priced kind.” She stood and coyly ran a toe across the sand, making squiggles. “I charge a lot by most standards but—”

  “You’re worth it,” he said without thinking. He laughed to himself. “This sounds corny, and I’m sure you hear it all the time, but you’re absolutely the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Carol blushed. Now a finger made circles on his chest, through the V of his open shirt. Flood felt his own nipples instantly stand up, as his eyes struggled not to stare outright at hers. When she opened her hand and ran her palm inside his shirt, Flood’s penis began to drool, threatening to spring up to full hardness right in his trunks.

  “You’re sweet, thank you. My rates are high, but because of what you did for me back there, I’ll give you a half-rate for anything, I mean, if you’re interested.”

  “I—” was all Flood could say.

  “No pressure, and if you don’t want to, that’s cool. Just think about it.”

  “I—”

  “Come on! Let’s get a drink!”

  She was dragging him off again. The situation was so cliched: middle-aged workaholic walking arm in arm with a stunning bombshell, feeling like he was real again. It wasn’t real at all, but that didn’t matter.

  Their hips bumped as they walked, each bump urging another drop of pre-ejaculant down his urethra. When the tanned skin of her thigh slid against his, he could’ve moaned.

  “I love this bar. Wanna know why?”

  “Good drink specials?”

  “No! It’s outrageously overpriced! But I love it ‘cos it’s always empty!”

  “That’s more my speed too,” Flood said for lack of an intelligent response.

  “I’m supposed to meet my friend Therese here later.”

  The name crackled in his head. Therese. From his eavesdrop on Leon and Jinny. Jesus, Jinny, Leon had complained, you’re gonna turn into a junkie like Ann and Therese. Oxycodone, they’d been talking about: needle-free heroin. But it was clear Carol couldn’t be into similar recreations, not with a body and glow like this. She didn’t really even look like a prostitute: she looked too grand for that, too perfect.

  The bar sprawled before a long, massive swimming pool, before an even more massive pink hotel that looked more like a castle. The elegant edifice threw a football-field sized shadow onto the beach.

  No customers at the bar, nor at any of the umbrella’d tables on the bar’s flank. This “worked” for Flood, indeed, for at any moment his arousal would be plain to see. An attractive fiftyish woman polished a glass and smiled at them.

  “Tequila Moonrise, and whatever my friend’s having,” Carol said. Flood ordered a Beck’s draft.

  “And I told you, this is on me,” Carol insisted. “I can’t afford to eat here, but I can always swing a few drinks.”

  “I’d be more than happy to p—”

  “Hush!”

  The drinks arrived. A menu shaped like a scallop shell was placed before them, then the barmaid curtly walked away.

  “Wow. Lobster Fritters,” Flood commented of the menu. Twenty-two bucks for four.

  “They’re great but way overpriced. One time I had them, though, and they’re delicious. A j—” She stalled. “A client got them for me.”

  She was going to say a john, Flood realized. “Let’s get some. I’m buying. I’m buying everything.”

  “Jake, come on, I said this was my treat.”

  “Won’t hear of it. And besides—” He looked at her and nearly rolled his eyes in awe. “Where on earth are you carrying money, anyway? I know it’s not stashed in that top.”

  She giggled again, raised her other hand, which brandished a minuscule fleshtone wrist-purse. She zipped it open and slipped him a business card. “If you’re not interested now, maybe you will be later. But just so you know, I’m a grand for all night, and that’s anything you want, as many times as you can get off. Five hundred for an hour, and two for a blow. But for you, half off.”

  Flood looked at the card. Because she’d mentioned Therese after Leon’s reference to her, he expected the card to be identical to the one Leon had given him, but instead, this one read: SUN ANGELS TOUR GUIDES - HENRY PHIPPS, MNGR. He remembered the Phipps’ name...

  Leon’s competition...

  The side of her calf touched his. She chatted her background, which sounded typical and very non-harrowing. It was small-talk, it was meaningless, and Flood knew that given her profession, he was meaningless. He was to her what a potential network buyer was to Flood. Once they said “no, thanks,” they were reduced to insignificance. But none of this mattered. She was doing her job with artistry, making him feel at ease and covertly stimulating him with her cheery voice, her giggles, her eye gestures and body language. Flood was enjoying her company, and she hadn’t been lying. There was never any pressure. “Those were delicious,” she said of the lobster fritters. Flood had also ordered satay, fresh-water shrimp skewers, and lastly, oysters on the half-shell.

  “Oh, I love raw oysters. You read my mind!” A hot hand opened on his thigh when she whispered, “And it’s true what they say. They really do make me horny!”

  Flood smiled. I�
�m sure they do. She’s working me, all right...and I don’t care.

  His breath thinned when he watched her eat, daintily holding up the shell, the tip of her tongue slipping around the oyster. Then she sucked it all right into her mouth.

  Oh, God...

  And now her gestures became less covert: her hand smoothing over his thigh, her legs rubbing his more directly. “Relax,” she whispered next. “She’s way over there, and can’t see under the bar anyway...”

  “What?” Flood began, then gritted his teeth. He tensed when her fingers slipped under his shirt and worked their way into the waistband of his trunks. His balls drew up at once, and even before her hand was on it, his penis shot fully hard. His first social instinct was to pull her hand out—Someone might see!— but why care?

  “Relax, relax.” Her whisper was like hot liquid. “There’s no one here. Let me play with it...”

  She knew how to play. Her fingers slipped all around, so lightly at first his nerves barely registered the tactility, then with a smooth firmness. Each beat of Flood’s heart forced more blood upward, to the extent that his already erect penis seemed to lengthen, by force.

  “What do you think?” she whispered.

  He could barely talk. “I-can’t. You don’t understand—it-it won’t work. I-I-I can never come. I can never keep it up...”

  Her hand gripped the shaft like a flight-stick, the pad of her thumb twirling over the lubricated knob as though his glans were a bomb-release trigger. “Jake, it sure doesn’t feel to me like you have any problem.” She whispered more hotly, her breath sultry and sweet from the drink. “This is one big hard cock I’ve got here in my hand! Let me take care of it for you. I want to do something for you, you know. .for earlier.”

  His chest felt so tight he could barely breathe. “In a minute, I’ll lose it...”

  “Yeah?” She didn’t sound convinced. She brought her thumb and forefinger together, and slid the ring slowly up and down, the pre-come pouring now. There was so much anyone would have thought his penis had been drenched in baby oil. “Relax, you’re just nervous. Look, the barmaid’s going back for ice!”

  Flood didn’t even bother to look.

  “I know you’re gonna come, I know you are,” she insisted. “Get it. Come all over my hand...”

  Flood kept his eyes closed. This was another oddity—his erections never lasted this long, save for last night during the beating. But there was no beating here, no violence, just perfect, unselfish lust. Perhaps his affliction was wearing off after so many years. Oh, God, I can only hope... If the Devil was sitting on the next stool, Flood knew he’d sell his soul just to come.

  Her strokes quickened. Flood filled his mind with images of her: her hairless pussy in his face, his cock sliding between the consummate tits. He imagined the taste of her as his tongue spun circles over the clitoral nugget. He could imagine her own tongue cradling the back of each testicle like a spoon cradling an egg.

  “Get it, get it. Let it all come out...”

  Then the image ruptured. It wasn’t his cock anymore on the verge of eruption. It was some other man’s. And it was Felicity’s hand, not Carol’s, and Felicity’s voice maintaining the secret whisper, “Get it, get it, shoot it...”

  Flood’s erection died in her hand to total limpness.

  She pulled her hand out, perplexed. After some silence, she said, “What happened? Was I doing it wrong?”

  “No,” his voice crunched like gravel being walked on. He regained his breath, humiliated. “What did you say earlier—your rates, I mean. Was it five hundred for an hour?”

  “Yeah, but...I can’t charge you anything for that. I wouldn’t feel right.”

  At least she’s got some real character in there somewhere, he thought. “No, I mean now.” He glanced to make sure the barmaid was out of earshot. “I’ll give you five hundred right now, just to listen to me. I just want to talk.”

  Before she could agree, he slipped five bills from his wallet and handed them to her beneath the counter.

  “Wow, I—”

  It was a lark, Flood knew. But what the hell? The only person he’d ever talked to about this was Dr. Untermann. Back in Seattle, and Seattle was a long way away.

  “I want to tell you about this problem I have,” he began.

  “Okay. Sometimes it’s good to talk about a problem with someone you don’t know, and someone you’ll probably never see again. It feels better afterwards, and sometimes a different perspective helps. An anonymous one. You can talk without worrying about what the other person might think of you.”

  “Yes,” Flood said. “I’m hoping so, anyway. And I’ll try not to bore you.” Then he began: “I have a sexual dysfunction which my psychiatrist charmingly refers to as a thematic-erotic inversion with ejaculatory incompetence and sequent erectile failure. How’s that for a diagnosis?”

  “It’s a mouthful, all right.” She popped a shrimp in her mouth, then whispered, “But they have stuff for that now.” Then she held up her wrist purse. “If you need a Viagra, I’ve got ‘em.”

  “It doesn’t work, none of that does.” He tapped his temple. “It’s all psychological. It’s like a toggle-switch in my brain. When I’m with woman, and it gets past a certain point, that sexual switch gets turned off, by a single image, a single memory.”

  “What memory?”

  “My ex-wife. Even after three years, it’s like sabotage.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  “Yes, and I know that’s ridiculous and illogical. She ruined me—lied, cheated, stole, and left me—but after all that, I know deep down, I’d take her back without thinking twice.”

  “Why?”

  He gave an honest shrug. “Because she was the best sex of my life, and now I can never have that again. My psyche’s still obsessed with her; it’s not even a conscious thing, at least that’s what my therapist has told me. And I believe it. What else can I believe?” Flood’s eyes panned over the nearly nude breasts and pubis, all that erotic flesh showing through the net—one of the most erotic images of his life. His penis—and his heart—felt like dead meat. “It’s like I’m being haunted,” he dragged on, lowering his voice. “It doesn’t matter what the circumstance is sexually. Whenever I’m with a woman, right at the moment before I’d...come...I lose my erection, and...no orgasm. As if, right then, right at the moment of my pleasure, the woman I’m with becomes my ex-wife, and all that anger and negativity shoots right into my head, and kills all sexual function.”

  Carol’s eyes blinked as she thought. “Okay, so...what about...”

  “Masturbation? Same thing. Whatever image is in my head...while I’m doing it—whatever beautiful, stimulating woman— changes into her. Felicity.”

  “Maybe there’s something you don’t really know about yourself,” she suggested. “Have you tried to get it on with guys?”

  Flood winced, shaking his head. “No, no, no. I’ve never been attracted to men, never.”

  “What about porn?”

  “Tried it, doesn’t work. Oh, I’ll get hard, I’ll get excited, but—”

  “Right before you’d get off, you lose it.”

  “Yes,” he groaned. His heart had picked up while he’d been telling her, his blood-pressure shooting up. Any reference to Felicity did that, it put him in a state of subdued terror. “Porn, call girls, oils, lubes, herbs, oysters, prescription drugs, even penis-pumps—” He was beginning to blush—“I’ve tried it all, and it all fails. That toggle gets turned off. Then—nothing.”

  More contemplation. She’d replaced her hand on his thigh, ran her tongue over her bottom lip as she thought. “Well, now that you’ve talked about it to someone else, maybe that unplugged the toggle. Let’s try. .” Her eyes darted off. Now the barmaid was conversing with a bus boy at the other end of the bar, chattering away. Before he could look back to Carol, her face was in his lap, his waistband hauled down. She suckled his bal s in her mouth, one at a time, then slipped the deflated penis pa
st her lips. She worked the limp meat like a milking-machine nozzle on a cow teat. When turgidity requited, the action became more dainty, her tongue-tip running slow, excruciating lines up and down the shaft, tracing the veins. She even seemed earnest when she stopped a moment and whispered, “Don’t let her come into your head. Think about me,” and then she commenced with what he could only guess was the finest act of fellatio ever performed in the history of human sexuality.

  His mind felt squashed with images of her, and just when he would fill her mouth with the horrendous back-pressure of sperm—

  Felicity fell into his head like a guillotine blade; an instant later, his penis was a tiny and pathetic strip of nerveless meat.

  There was nothing to say, yet she smiled just the same and offered, “Jake, whatever this problem is of yours, I know you’ll get over it in time.”

  Flood doubted it but he nodded anyway. He ordered another round of drinks in silence while she patted his thigh in a lost condolence. “And when you do get over it,” she continued, “find that card, fly back here, and call me.”

  “I will,” he said uselessly. Now it was all gone, any rapport that had been there previously. He drained half his beer in one slug, trying to think of small-talk, but a sudden encroacher saved him:

  “Hi, guys!”

  An unseen arm was around him, and what felt like a very firm and very large breast pressed against his back.

  “Hi, Therese,” Carol said.

  Flood turned to face a stunning, bright-eyed girl with ember-red hair cut like a flyer’s cap. Breasts even larger and more gravity-defying than Carol’s gaped back at Flood, jutting from a spritey, lissome pixie. A see-through white sarong and veil flowed off her hips and shoulders—a sun-ghost. Her skin, eyes, and smile radiated a cast of perfect health and vitality. Sure as hell doesn’t look like the prescription-dope junkie Leon was talking about, Flood surmised. She leaned over and gave Carol a peck on the cheek.

  “Therese, this is my friend, Jake. He saved me from the grossest scumbag earlier—yeck! You should’ve seen this guy. But Jake whipped his ass.”

  “Defender of Women!” Therese exclaimed, then it was Jake’s cheek that got pecked.