Summer Sunshine

"I don't think so," I said shaking my head. Her eyes got huge and she looked at me incredulously.

"Why not?" she asked. She seemed to be taking this personally. I began to wonder why she was here inviting me to meet her friend at a coffee shop.

"I just don't have time for it," I said. Then I opened my door and went into the hotel room. She turned and stalked away with her older friend trying hard to keep up with her. The older woman turned back to me with an amused look on her face.

Less than five minutes later, I turned as someone came into the hotel room. I'd left the door open because I was expecting the bellman with the rest of my luggage, but I turned and saw her standing in my doorway.

She was still wearing the dress from the airport. Her presence changed the room. It somehow became more elegant just from her standing there framed in the doorway, like a painting made real.

"Why don't you want to have coffee with me?" she asked. It was the strangest thing. She'd just started talking as if this was simply a continuation of our previous conversation. There was no greeting, no preamble, she just started talking. Even stranger was the fact that it felt natural. It was as if there was already some sort of intimacy between us.

She looked across the room at me and it was like all of the air got sucked out of the room. The air conditioner was still on. The thermostat was still the same and yet it was hotter and more humid in that room.

I actually stammered as I tried to form an answer. She closed the distance between us. She seemed to float across the room. Her legs made all of the motions of locomotion, but it seemed like she didn't actually need to touch the floor. Her form just flowed from one place to another until we were close enough to touch.

"I...I...is not an answer," she said.

"I don't have the time," I said.

"You don't have anything to do until tomorrow," she said. "I checked. Anton is busy with some French woman he met the last time he was here."

She looked at me and changed tactics. "You saved me from falling flat on my face and possibly getting injured or worse yet, from damaging my cello. I just wanted to buy you a cup of coffee to show my gratitude. Besides I don't take you as the typical accountant."

"What's wrong with accountants?" I asked.

"They have no soul," she said. She ran one finger over my chest, touching it and probing. "Too much muscle under this suit to be the typical accountant," she said.

"What do you mean accountants have no soul?" I asked, backing up and trying to create some distance between us.

"Accountants know the cost of EVERYTHING and the value of NOTHING," she said. I'd heard the line before but it never affected me as much as when she said it. In answer to my stepping back away from her, she simply stepped even closer to me. Her fingers never lost contact with me though. She ran them up over my shirt collar and touched the bare skin of my neck. It got even hotter in the room and I think I started to sweat. Our bodies were close enough that she had to feel the rising tent in my pants and I could clearly see the imprints her nipples were making in the material of the dress.

"Sorry about the delay with your bags, Monsieur," said the bellman loudly. He had that same snotty expression on his face that French waiters always have in movies. He was almost comedic. He was a caricature brought to life. He had the tiny, hilarious hat that bellman in movies from the fifties wore. It was tilted jauntily on his head as if it was a badge of honor. He even had that tiny, shitty mustache that looked like it was drawn on his face with an eye liner. And, of course, his hand was stuck out expecting a tip.

I looked at my bags on the floor around him and looked at my watch. I believed in rewarding people for doing their jobs and doing their jobs well. On the other hand, if a person didn't do a good job, fuck them. I was usually a great tipper for great service. I was a mediocre tipper for mediocre service. And I stiffed people regularly for shitty service. I checked in at the front desk over thirty minutes ago. I was the only person whose bags he had to bring up. I wondered if this was his first day or if he'd simply gotten lost on his way to my room. I was about to interrogate him to find out why it took him a half an hour to get my bags to me. Maybe he needed time to smoke a fucking cigarette or to go through my bags.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to because the climate in the room changed yet again. The finger that she'd been slowly moving across my face joined the other four exquisite fingers on that hand as I turned to face him. She didn't move away from me at all. This put us in a position where we were literally shoulder to shoulder and she wrapped her arm around my waist. For two people who were almost total strangers, it was an extremely intimate position to be in. I began to wonder if she'd even noticed my wedding ring.

That thought alone caused my anger to spike. I wasn't angry at the girl. I was pissed at Clara. Why should I have expected some girl I didn't know to respect my wedding ring when my wife clearly had no respect for her own?

I draped my own arm around her waist and looked back at the bellman. I have to admit that the guy had balls the size of an aircraft carrier. His arm had begun to shake from being held straight out for so long but his gaze never wavered. I pulled a few notes of the smallest denomination I could find out of my pocket and handed them to him.

"Thank you Monsieur," he spat out. Somehow the words, "thank you," sounded as if he meant, "Fuck you." But he bowed and turned towards the door.

"Leave it open?" I said. I'm not sure if I asked him to do it because I thought that having the door open would protect ME from her; or if I thought it would protect HER from me. It didn't matter but I did notice the smirk on his face as he closed it.

"Where were we?" she smiled as she looked into my eyes. There was a connection so strong it was scary. It was very similar to what had happened in the elevator. In my mind, I tried to write it off as lust. I'd heard all kinds of stories for most of my life where they described lust as being hot and irresistible and love as being cooler and longer burning.

I had no intention of ruining what was left of my marriage by succumbing to what was probably the last gasp of testosterone in me raging against the dying light. Some men go crazy as their testosterone levels drop. They get bad hair pieces or dye their hair and buy sports cars. Shit, I was only forty five. Was I going crazy already?

The only thing I knew was that at that moment, I wanted her badly. I put that thought away and focused my attention in a different direction. "Okay," I said. "Why don't you go and tell your friends where you'll be, while I change. I'll meet you there in ten minutes. Do I have to drive there?"

"You have a car?" she asked, smiling. I couldn't tell what was going through her head. "You don't have to drive. It's only a block away. Just out the door near the main desk and turn right. Ten minutes," she said, pointing her finger at me. "Don't make me come and find you again."

Even as I took off my suit, I wondered what I was getting into. I was sure that as soon as I stepped into the coffee shop, I'd look around and the joke would be sprung on me. A steaming pile of dog shit would fall from the ceiling and splatter itself all over me and they'd all laugh. I was still ever so slightly pissed by her cracks about accountants having no souls. But I dressed anyway. I put on a pair of casual pants and a polo shirt. It wasn't very cool. I didn't have my pants sagging off of my ass, showing the top of my underwear and I wore my most comfortable Italian loafers, not the new Air Jordans, but for a guy my age, I was comfortable.

I followed the directions she'd given me and found myself in front of Coffee City, still wondering what I was doing there. During the ten minutes that had passed since I'd seen her, I'd tried to think about the possible divorce in front of me, but my thoughts kept going back to that girl/woman whose name I didn't even know.

I looked through the crowd of people in the café and as luck wouldn't have it, she wasn't in one of the convenient tables that were on the sidewalk. Nope, she was all the way in the back, at a table full of people. I recognized some of them from seeing them at the orchestra's rehearsals. I wasn't looking forward to walking through that mass of humanity to her table. I suspected that when I got there the joke would be sprung.

I imagined her asking me why I was there and looking at me as if I was crazy. Then she'd tell them all how she had tons of old guys stalking her, even in Paris. I was about to turn and walk back the way I'd come when she spotted me. She flashed me that smile and waved me over.

I made my way through the crowd of people and realized that I wasn't out of place. One of the bizarre things about the place was that there were all ages and types of people there. It wasn't simply a place for young people to gather or for old people either. Everyone was there drinking coffee or whatever, laughing, talking, arguing about sports and having a good time.

As I got to her table, she stood up and I went stock still. I was sure that whatever was going to happen would happen then. And it did. But it wasn't what I was expecting. She stood up and actually took my hand. A younger guy, who had a musical instrument case that looked like it had some kind of horn in it, took one look at her holding my hand and glared at me.

"I'll see you later," she said casually and dragged me across the restaurant where we found an open table.

"We could have stayed back there with your friends," I said. "That way when I leave you'd still have your seat."

"Exactly what do you mean by that?" she asked as we sat down.

"You know," I said smiling. "We'll have a cup of coffee or whatever and you'll tell me why I'm here."

She looked at me nervously. "At first I just wanted to thank you for..." she began and she hesitated. "Serendipity," she said, shrugging her shoulders and throwing her arms out wide.

"You're here for the pure fuck of it." I looked at her like she was crazy. She stood up and moved her chair around the table until she was sitting right next to me and we were so close that I was uncomfortable.

"People are full of shit," she said. She pointed back at her table. "Do you see all of those people at that table?"

"Uhm, you're pointing at your friends, right?" I said.

"Those people are not my friends," she said. "Until yesterday I had rarely ever spoken to any of them. Brenda is my friend." She pointed at the chunky woman she was usually with.

"It's mostly because of you that I'm here with these people," she said matter of factly. "Maybe they're your friends."

"I see them almost every day. Some of them are young. Some of them are old. They gather together and they chatter about everything and nothing. I rarely speak to them. I can watch them moving on in their lives and it's weird. Everyone changes; I stay the same. I'm...a solo cello, outside a chorus."

I nodded my head. Though her analogy was about the members of her orchestra, I totally understood it. I often wondered what my connection to the people I worked with was as well.

"I've got a secret. It's time for me to tell that you've been keeping me warm," I looked at her and wondered what she meant. "Brenda and I had a talk," she continued. "Brenda thinks that I've stood outside of life watching it instead of participating for too long. She thinks I should plunge into the stream of life and experience all of the joy and bitterness for myself."

"But don't you live life just by being alive?" I asked.

She squeezed my arm and laughed. "I'm twenty five years old," she said. "I've never had a boyfriend since elementary school. I've had sex two or three times in my life and even then I just went looking for a guy, just so I wasn't a virgin. It's kind of embarrassing these days to be a virgin. No one connects it with purity anymore. They connect it more with desperation. They make it seem like you're not having sex because no one wants you."

"I guess I've never really given things like that much thought. I've always had my music and that was enough for me. My Cello is my main focus. What do you have?" she asked. "Maybe it's your wife?"

I shook my head. "More likely it's my daughter and then my cars," I said.

"What kind of cars?" she asked smiling.

"Mustangs," I said.

"Oh, no," she said. "Not you too? My dad had one."

"I have six," I said. She just started laughing.

"This may work," she said. "I like seeing you outside of that suit. You look much more... friendly without the suit and the glasses."

"Contacts," I said.

"Anyway, Brenda and I were having a talk and she decided that it was time for me to find the great love of my life. But, since I have no idea about what it's like to be in love or any of that shit, we decided that I need a practice guy." I looked at her strangely and started stroking the wedding band on my finger.

"Don't get upset," she said. "I'm talking about a simple summer fling. Nothing serious, I just need to learn the ins and outs of the relationship dance. It will, of course, only be temporary with a decided beginning, middle and end, just like a song. We've already done the intro," she smiled. "So now we're at the beginning stage..."

"What do you mean, WE?" I asked.

"Don't you want to be my summer fling?" she asked.

"Uhm, I'm married," I quickly pointed out.

"I don't care," she said.

"Isn't that immoral?" I asked. "You seem like a nice girl."

"I am a nice girl," she said. "I do this thing when I make a decision. I base it on music. A song comes to mind right now. Cheap trick has a song called 'Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere.' I want to go everywhere." I laughed when she said it.

"So anyway, I was about to tell Brenda how ridiculous I thought the idea was, when I tripped and almost killed myself. Suddenly, I found myself suspended above the floor waiting for an impact and the sound of my precious Cello splintering, when I stared into the most amazing eyes. It was then that I decided that maybe her stupid idea could work."

"I think it might be good for both of us," she said. "You seem to be carrying your own issues along with you. You seem to be burdened with the same sort of isolation and sadness too." I nodded.

"I guess I can see what you're talking about. You're a young woman and you want to explore some aspects of your life. But I'm an old married guy. And I'm..."

"And nothing," she said. "You're what forty?"

"Forty five," I said.

"Fifty is the new thirty," she said.

"Hey, what about that guy at your table?" I asked.

Her expression changed as she looked at the guy I pointed at. "He's an ass half," she spat. "It takes two of him to make an asshole. He screwed my friend Brenda for the whole winter and then dumped her in the spring. He's a pussy hound. Remember how I told you that those people at the table aren't my friends?"

"Yep, you said they were my friends," I said. "I still don't understand why."

She smiled at me and reached across the table and took my hand. "Did you feel anything pass between us when you caught me?" she asked. "I did and I've never felt anything like that before. I knew that I wanted you to be the man I had my fling with. Nothing else mattered. Before then, I didn't wear makeup and I dressed in baggy sweats. I always kept my hair up in a bun and generally just didn't do anything unless I was dressing up for a performance. But I wanted you to notice me, so I let my hair down and put on a dress." I nodded again and smiled.

"I...I noticed," I stuttered.

She smiled at me and put her head really close to mine. "You were supposed to," she said. "The problem is that it drew out all of those idiots too. You don't have to make a decision about this immediately, but I don't see a downside for you. And there's nothing but upside for me."

I noticed that her eyes had started looking upwards. I turned and looked to see what she was looking at. The guy from the other table was standing over us. We were so close together and concentrating so intently on each other, that I hadn't noticed him approach.

"Hey, Athena," he said. "We're all thinking about going to the beach tomorrow. I wanted to know what you thought about the idea."

"I think you should have a good time and stop worrying about what I'm thinking or doing," she said. I hadn't said a word, but he glared at me again.

The guy just wouldn't give up. "I was just curious about what you wanted to do," he said.

"I'd like to finish my conversation and be left alone," she said sweetly. He left after glaring at me again.

We picked up our conversation and whiled the afternoon away talking and laughing like old friends. We were interrupted a few times as one person or another came over to our table. She told me about her life and how much she loved her music. And I, in turn, found myself opening up to her about my problems with Clara and how I'd really run away to Paris to think about what I should do.

She was a great listener. I could have sat there with her stroking my hand and looking into my eyes. She screwed up her face and started to say something but held herself back when I told her exactly what Clara had been doing.

She was a study in contrasts. It amazed me that she was trying to get me to consider having a summer fling with her, but she thought that Clara having sex with other men was inexcusable.

"In your case, you'd be doing it to have some kind of revenge against her. She started it," she said.

"Two wrongs don't make a right," I said.

"Three lefts do," she said. "I've been LEFT out of life. You were LEFT out of her thoughts when she cheated. And she should be LEFT out of consideration for that. That makes this right."

"So how would this work exactly?" I asked. Her smile tripled in intensity.

"We just start seeing each other. We let the relationship grow on its own until we just end it at the end of the summer," she said. "In your case, it would be up to you to decide whether or not you tell your wife. For the next three months or so, we just act naturally," she said.

"How do we know when it's over?" I asked.

"We can pick a date either at random or just whenever summer ends. We're both adults and we know that it will probably hurt a bit. If we're good at this, we're going to have a lot invested in it emotionally. It will probably be a little bit painful to stop seeing each other." I nodded.

"I want that," she said. "I guess it's time I experienced the pain of having my guts ripped out by love."

Just hearing her words took me back to what I was feeling. It was exactly what I felt each time I thought of Clara fucking those men.

"No, you really don't," I said. I tried to stop it, but a single tear rolled down my cheek. Again, the image that I couldn't erase from my mind of Clara in bed with some faceless guy caused me to ask, "What about...?"

"Sex," she said, far louder than I was comfortable with. "We're definitely going to do that."

At that moment my phone rang. I looked down and saw that it was Clara calling me. Just seeing her name on the screen of my phone pissed me off to the point where I made the snap decision that I'd been leaning towards anyway.

"I'm in," I said.

She picked up our coffees and we linked arms.

"To sweet beginnings and bitter endings," she said.

For the rest of the afternoon we settled in and got to know each other better. We touched each other; we laughed and talked like longtime friends. Her fellow orchestra members, including the guy who hated me, looked over at our table several times. Sometime later, as the sun started to descend, she leaned over and kissed me.