Layover

"Arthur, I suppose I can trust you, but what happens when my husband finds out that I'm sharing a room with another man?"

"Well, he doesn't HAVE to find out, actually, unless you tell him." Arthur said. "But, actually, that is probably the best idea ... you need to call your husband to let him know what's happening anyway. Why not just let him know our situation? I'd guess he'll understand!"

I decided that that was a good idea; I would call Frank in Salem and tell him what my situation was, and he would surely tell me to get out of here right away!

I got through to my son's new number, and Denny answered. "Hi, sweetie!" I said, "is your dad there?"

"Yeah, just a second, mom. He was just about to leave for the airport. Is everything okay?"

"Oh, yeah. We had a screw-up here in Salt Lake City, and my flight's delayed until tomorrow evening. That's why I want to talk with your dad."

I could hear Denny shouting "Dad!" with his hand over the mouthpiece. "It's mom!" In a couple of minutes, Frank's voice came over the phone saying, "Hi, hon! Are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah, this whole thing is just a royal screw-up, but nothing dangerous!" I said, thinking, 'Well, nothing dangerous except the sleeping arrangements, maybe.' I described the sequence of events and explained that we were stuck in Ogden until at least tomorrow morning. I knew that the only connecting flight from SLC to Portland was the one I had been scheduled to take this evening, so even after we flew over to SLC, I would be stuck in the airport tomorrow for almost twelve hours.

"So, Frontier is putting you all up in a motel tonight?" Frank asked.

"Several motels, actually, I guess. We weren't the only plane stuck here with an expired crew. There's passengers all over town, I think!"

"Well, okay," my husband said, "as long as you're safe and sound! I'll just meet you tomorrow at the same time, same place. You got everything you're gonna need?"

"Well, Frank, there is one other thing!" I said, gathering my courage to tell him about our embarrassing lodging situation. "They doubled us up with other passengers." I waited to try to phrase this next part correctly. "And as you know, I bought my tickets as 'Vic' Meadows!"

Again, I waited, hoping he would guess the implications of what I was telling him. Frank was well aware of the weird confusions that occurred to me ... to US ... regularly because of my unusual nickname.

Suddenly, I heard hardy laughter on the other end of the phone. "They've put you in with a GUY, haven't they?" my husband asked.

At first, I was miffed that he would laugh at my predicament, but I couldn't help seeing the humor in the situation.

"So, Vic, is your new roommate a mad rapist or some young heart-throb?"

"No," I answered quietly, so Arthur wouldn't hear and be insulted, "he's a nice older businessman. I'm sure he's a nice enough guy, and he's married with a family himself. There are two beds and all, I just feel really awkward sleeping with another man!"

"Oh, for crying out loud, Vic! Nobody's asking you to SLEEP with him! You're just sharing the room! If he seems decent enough, just get dressed in the bathroom and scoot into your bed. Don't worry about it!"

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Arthur and I had dinner together in the restaurant attached to the motel. I just couldn't shake the notion that I was doing everything I would be doing if I WERE having an affair.

Here I was having dinner in another town with a good-looking, interesting guy, and afterwards, we were going to spend the night together in a motel room. It was creepy. And also, kind of arousing.

I think Arthur sensed that talking about his family and his job might help put my mind at ease, so that I at least knew as much about him as he did about me. He said that he and his wife had two sons. One was living in Denver, was married and had three kids. The other had died in Khe Sahn a few years ago. I was all over myself apologizing for mentioning how relieved we had been that Denny had avoided getting drafted, but Arthur said that he just wanted to tell me about himself a little, and that he was glad our son was safe. And he also said something that really set my mind at ease about his character.

"Talking about Mark doesn't make me sad. Not any more. It's a terrible thing for a parent to lose a child, but not talking about it doesn't make it hurt any less. I will always love my son, and I will always resent losing him in this stupid war, but I love to tell others about him. We're still so proud of him, and thinking about him just reminds me of what a great boy he was!"

We lingered over our meal for what seemed like a long time. It wasn't that great of food, but it was okay, and we had nowhere to go and nothing much else to do. And we both seemed to be enjoying one another's company very much.

Every so often, in the back of mind, I couldn't help thinking 'If I WERE going to have an affair, Arthur would be exactly the sort of man I might have an affair with.' But, on the surface, I tried not to show any excitement about spending the night with this man. I didn't REALLY want anything like that to happen.

Did I?

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Neither of us was interested at all in watching television. Arthur set himself up on the dinette with some paperwork from his briefcase, and I finished my NYT puzzle.

Then I took my carry-on into the bathroom and went through my bedtime routine of washing my face, brushing out my hair, brushing my teeth, and putting on my dowdy flannel nightgown. I was often embarrassed about how fuddy-duddy my choice of nightwear was, but flannel gowns are so warm and comfortable, and Frank said he thought they were sexy. I knew that was a white lie, but I appreciated him for saying it.

And tonight, a frumpy, baggy, shape-less nightgown was just the ticket, actually.

I gathered up all my stuff and came out into the open combination room, and Arthur took his turn in the bathroom. When he emerged in a few minutes, he was wearing a neatly-pressed set of flannel men's pajamas and slippers. I almost laughed out loud. We looked like a matched set of old married people.

Which we were, I guess. We just weren't married to each other.

After some small pleasantries, I climbed into the bed closest to the bathroom, and Arthur started to take blankets out to the living area to make-up the sofa.

"Oh, no, Arthur!" I said to stop him. "That's silly! If you were going to attack me, you could do it just as easily from the couch as this bed! Go ahead and sleep in the bed and get some actual rest!"

"Oh, thank you so much, Vic!" Arthur said, putting his bed back together. In a few minutes, he also climbed in and turned out his light.

"Arthur," I asked, "do you mind if I maybe leave on the bathroom light so I can find my way in there if I have to ... you know. I can pull the door almost closed!"

"No, that would be fine, Vic. Good idea!"

Once I got the lights the way I wanted them – bathroom on, bedroom and the rest off – I climbed back into bed once more. I could tell by his breathing that Arthur was already asleep.

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But I didn't sleep well at all.

I think I spent all night waiting for him to tip-toe over to my bed and try to slide in next to me. If I did drift off, I startled awake every time Arthur rolled over or stirred at all. Once, after a few hours, Arthur did get up, and I thought to myself, 'Well, this is it! Now he's going to rape me!'

But Arthur just wobbled his way into the bathroom and closed the door. I could hear that distinctive male dribble for a while, then the dark bedroom flooded with light as he opened the door, then dimmed again as he pushed it back, almost closed and went back to his bed.

I was ashamed to realize that I actually felt disappointed.

As I lay there in the dim light that edged out of the bathroom, my imagination couldn't stop playing mental movies of what might happen. I pictured Arthur transformed into an angry, muscle-bound thug with a huge sex organ, enormously erect, dribbling in anticipation as he lewdly threw back the covers I was actually cowering under, and forcing himself on me and into me.

Or again, I imagined that he might quietly slip into my bed, spoon up next to me, and I would feel his member hard and insistent pushing itself into the seam of my buttocks, forcing the flannel of my nightgown deep into me, until it finally gave way and Arthur entered me through the tear and took his pleasure.

When I realized that I was embellishing these fantasies with the assistance of my fingers between my legs, I was mortified. I rolled over and tried to remember in detail exactly what we had packed into that rental van that Frank and Denny had left our house with two days ago.

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I guess I must have slept eventually, because the next thing I knew, the telephone was ringing with our wake-up call. I glanced over at the flip-numeral clock radio and saw that it was still only six a.m. The airline wanted everybody up and fed in time to get us over the lake and back onto our itineraries.

"Arthur, do you think I'll have time for a shower?" I asked.

There was no answer. I got up, and turned on some lights, only to find that Arthur had already gotten up. All of his stuff was gone, but he had left me a note on the bathroom counter:

"Good morning!

I'll see you in the restaurant! –

A.M."

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I decided I'd rather have a shower than breakfast if it came to that. I would have over twelve hours to cool my heels in the SLC airport once we got there, so there would be plenty of time to get something to eat, but just this one chance to take a shower.

Arthur was waiting patiently in the motel lobby just outside of the entrance to the restaurant fifteen minutes later when I got there. There was a trolley beginning to fill up with the passengers' carry-ons as they got moving, in anticipation of the arrival of the Air Force shuttle bus.

"The bus won't be here for another twenty minutes," Arthur said. "The restaurant's pretty efficient ... let's go get something to eat!"

"Oh, Arthur, I didn't expect you to wait for me! You should have had your breakfast!"

"I had some coffee," he said, indicating the complimentary pot provided by the motel. "I didn't want to eat alone when I knew YOU would be here soon!"

I'm sure I blushed with the implied compliment.

We were seated immediately, and were able to eat most of a nice breakfast before we saw the shuttle bus pull up outside.

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I was sitting in the lounge of the Salt Lake City airport, trying to work on a new puzzle. I had been to the newsstand and bought a collection of New York Times' crosswords to keep myself busy during my long wait for my flight that evening.

I had also called Frank again, and told him that my "roommate" ("Your room-WHAT!?" Frank joked.) had been a perfect gentleman, and that I was safely in the SLC terminal, waiting patiently for my flight to Portland later.

When we arrived after our short flight of maybe fifteen minutes, Arthur and I had exchanged goodbyes as Arthur headed for the long-term parking to get his car for the drive home to Evanston, Wyoming where his company was based.

But my mind wasn't really on the crosswords. The pornographic movies of the night before kept replaying in my mind, and I wondered if I would always regret not stepping out of character for a few hours with Arthur and having a fling. That time in the motel in Ogden was like a slice of my life set apart from everything else, a time I might have used to make myself an intimate, secret memory which would last the rest of my life.

I would stare off into the distance, imagining what might have been, then try to force my attention back on my puzzle. The images of Arthur this morning were not of the threatening, muscle-bound cartoon of my sleepy night-time imagination, but a more realistic image of a handsome, older gentleman making patient, soft, romantic love to me.

I shook my head and was pondering the clue to a three-letter entry, "Last of the Mohicans," when I was very startled to hear someone hiss directly into my ear. I leaned away, and spun my head to see who had done this, only to see Arthur, leaning over the seat behind me, smiling at my distress.

"E-S-S," he said. "The last letter of Mohicans."

I grinned and stood up to greet him. "Arthur! I thought you had a long drive ahead of you! What are you doing here?"

"I couldn't stand the thought of you spending the day here alone, just doing crosswords or something!" Arthur said. I'm sure I blushed again.

"Surely, you're not going to sit here with me for nine hours?" I said.

"Absolutely not!" Arthur said, serious now. "I rented us a room."

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Everything I had feared and longed for the previous night, we did with one another during those hours together in Arthur's room at the Airport Marriott.

Arthur had been true to his word and made no advances on me when we were stuck in the same room by misfortune the night before, but when he invited me to spend the day with him, I found no will to resist him at all.

It took only a few minutes to get to his car outside in the short-term parking. It was a BMW, which didn't mean anything to me then except it seemed like a nice car.

The Marriott was several steps nicer than the Best Western, and our room was beautiful and tastefully appointed. The bed was oversized, something new then, a "king-size" bed. It seemed like it was made for sex, and I blushed again when I first saw it. It was already turned down, ready for the two of us to ...

When we arrived, Arthur took my coat, carry-on and purse, and simply wrapped me up in his arms. His embrace was so strong that I involuntarily bent back, my stomach pressed tightly into his, as he leaned forward and kissed me for the first time.

I was overwhelmed. I knew what I was about to do ... what WE were about to do ... and I was ravenous to begin it, but I hardly knew how to start. I had only ever been with my husband, and the build-up from our first kiss to our first intimate encounter had taken months. Even now, Frank patiently courted me for hours before we retired to the bedroom together.

But Arthur was not patient that day. Not at all.

He broke our kiss, and simply began to undress me. He quickly unbuttoned down the back of my wool dress, not unduly fast or at all violently, but with no hesitation. Once we were alone in that room, Arthur and I said nothing to one another before he began removing my clothes.

Soon enough, my dress was a puddle around my ankles. I was embarrassed to be standing there in my slip, knowing that he would soon see my hose with the runs in the top, my practical cotton bra, and my frumpy white cotton panties.

But Arthur didn't seem to care. He worked with speed yet patiently, slipping straps aside, urging my arms to raise when he needed to remove something, knowledgeably releasing my brassiere catch, rolling my hose down my legs, and finally, turning me to face him, slipping his thumbs under the elastic of my panties and slowly lowering them, watching my body as he teased himself with his first view of my sex.

I was shivering, but not from cold. My nipples were standing out prominently, and I could feel that I was lubricating between my legs. When I was fully naked, for the first time naked before a man other than my husband, Arthur sat back into a spindly-looking chair and just looked at me, his hands resting lightly on my hips. His eyes scanned frankly up and down the front of my body, pausing at my face to smile gently, then again at my breasts, my tummy, my pussy, my calves.

Every woman dreads this moment, I think. A man, a new man, making his candid appraisal of your body. You've had no warning time to lose that few pounds you think you must, or time for the red marks from your over-tight skirt or bra to fade. You wonder what he will do now ... will he dare turn his back on you and say, "Uh, I just remembered, I've got something I've got to do," then leave you to your shame?

But no.

Arthur stood up and gathered me into his arms again, and this time our kiss became that open-mouthed tangle of tongues that somehow old married couples don't seem to bother with much. The kind of kiss that begins at the lips, passes on to your tongues, your teeth, your gums, your cheeks, the rest of your face, and then somehow switches on every sensory receptor in your body. You feel stirrings in your loins, yes, but also tingle up and down the calves of your legs, in your chest, up your back, in your scalp.

How can a kiss do that?

Arthur and I refused to break our kiss and tried together to undress him, too. But it soon became so awkward that we relented and separated while I concentrated below his waist and he removed his tie, his shirt, and his undershirt.

In the end, I paused as he had done before revealing Arthur's penis to my eyes. I could see its general shape and size as it strained below the fabric of his boxer shorts. But I looked up into his eyes for some indication of his will for me to remove them before I proceeded. He smiled and nodded, and I lowered his shorts.

I had only ever seen my husband Frank's cock before. I don't know if I had any real expectations, except that it would probably resemble Frank's penis. And I suppose it did, in a generic sort of way.

But you can't be kneeling on the floor in front of a naked near-stranger, looking at his erection, and deal with it in the abstract. I was suddenly, terribly, wonderfully THERE, alive in the moment, aware of the gravity of what we were doing, what I was doing, as I stared at Arthur's cock.

It was a beautiful and terrible thing. Bigger than Frank's, I guess. Oh, I can't pretend; it WAS quite a bit bigger than Frank's. Frank is uncircumcised, but our son Denny had a circumcision, so I thought I knew what that would look like. But Arthur was an adult man, and his cock was painfully erect ... I could see it throbbing with his heartbeat. I had never seen anything like the bulbous red-purple swelling at the tip of his penis. It was intimidating and also frightening yet incredibly arousing. As I squatted there on my ankles, I could feel my own moisture seep out from my aching vagina with my arousal.

As for the rest of his shaft, it too seemed massive, the shaft both longer and thicker than Frank's, and at this moment, harder than I had ever seen my husband's cock. Arthur's penis looked as if it might have been injured at some point in his life, as it was bent in the middle, emerging from his body as Frank's did, but turning sharply to the left about halfway along his length. I wondered what that might feel like inside of me. What that WOULD feel like inside of me! As I felt him with my fingers, the oddly-bent shaft seemed like a loose sheath of supple chamois stretched over an angled cylinder of nearly-molten steel.

I leaned in to kiss Arthur's penis, but I felt him reach beneath my arms and lift me to my feet, then continue lifting me until he was somehow carrying my whole body over to the gigantic bed.

Arthur laid me down on my back, my head propped up on a stack of pillows, then slowly moved his hands and face over the entire surface of my body as he knelt there beside me. He slid his smooth, warm hands over every inch, spending no less time caressing my arm pits and ankles than he did my breasts or pussy. He followed his hands with his face, only a few inches away from me, scanning my every feature, kissing here and there, licking me in unexpected places, and yes, in the expected places, too. I could feel his little moustache as he touched me with his mouth, but it never tickled. Instead, his moustache seemed to add to the sensuousness of his oral play.