Maipenrai Loving

"Maipenrai."

Theodore sputtered as he dabbed at the beer he'd splashed on the bodice of the young Thai woman, and then he shrank in horror in realization that his wife, Mavis, was sitting across the table from him and taking it all in. "Excuse me?" he managed in a strangled voice.

"Lek means 'never mind,' dear," Mavis interjected, her voice smooth as silk, a little tight smile on her face. "That's Thai for a whole host of meanings. Whatever, don't mention it, it's nothing, and so forth." She gave a little laugh and opened her clutch bag and extracted a compact. She opened it and primped her hair, which almost rustled as stiff as it was, with the aid of the small, oval mirror, oblivious to tableau playing out in front of her between the high and mighty and the low and subservient.

"I know what maipenrai means," Theodore muttered, still confused and much on edge.

"Let me get you another beer," Lek said as she popped up from her seat, mortified more that the Carpet King of Thailand, the farang—foreigner—who was fabulously wealthy and employed hundreds, was red-faced embarrassed in public even though it had been he whose hand was trembling so when Mrs. Sheffield commanded her to sit at the table. And even though it had been he who had spilled his beer on her. As she rose, two waiters rushed toward them from the corners of the room, both with accusing stares boring into Lek as if she'd shot one of their well-oiled patrons.

"No, no," Theodore stuttered, completely nonplused, as he half rose from his seat. "It is I who . . ."

But he stopped there, unable to go on. This was completely out of his context and his control. That never happened to him, the expatriate American businessman who ruled a good 37 percent of the world's carpet production through his foreign labor plants. He had never been in this position before. And worse, he was running along the edge of compromise before his ice princess wife, who forever scrutinized and fashioned his every move—or certainly tried to—and had done so from the moment her father had bought and paid for him by bankrolling his business empire.

Mavis had plucked him almost from the cradle—straight out of the MBA graduation line. And to this date, thirteen years later, which also represented the difference between their ages, he still did not know why. Although she was highly intelligent, both intriguing and thought-provoking in conversation, and an ideal hostess and arm candy at the theater and conventions, she had never warmed up to him in bed. And thus he had sought release and solace of that nature elsewhere, whenever he could. And until today, it had never been even a whisper of a threat to him.

And that's what had brought the three of them to this table in the café off the lobby of Bangkok's Dusit Thani hotel—he, his wife, and his mistress. And it explained his trembling hand that had led to the unfortunate accident and brought the attention of all the well-heeled foreign expatriates and rich or titled Thai lounging around in the café to their table. Even the waiters had looked on in horror as the young Thai woman, herself embarrassed beyond all belief, was ushered into the café by Theodore's wife. It wasn't that the young woman wasn't nubile and beautiful. It was because everyone there knew she was a hairdresser in the hotel's salon. Mavis Sheffield's hair dresser.

What had possessed Mavis to do it, Theodore wondered. She had her charities and all that and was outspoken in her egalitarianism, most certainly—but of course she'd never brought it home and he had no idea she would take any of it seriously.

It had all been bad timing. Theodore kept a room at the Dusit Thani for his pleasures, and it had been his bad fortune to arrive in the lobby simultaneously with Lek, by assignation, and his wife, by accident, who said she was "just dropping in for tea" on her way to an art opening at the Bhirasri Institute.

She hadn't actually caught Theodore and Lek together, but Lek had been approaching as Mavis called out to Theodore, voicing her surprise that he was here, and he was mumbling his way through an explanation.

"Ah, Lek," Mavis had said as she caught the approaching woman in the periphery of her vision before Lek could veer off to the side. "It's good to see you. I'll be in on Thursday for the usual, but how do you like how it's standing up?" Mavis had moved her head from side to side—but the hair hadn't moved a millimeter; it was standing up like a battle helmet. Mavis preferred the "every hair plastered in place" style, which, to be fair, still looked good on her. She still looked a highly polished thirty-five, which was a fifteen-year gift of the gods.

"Yes, Thursday," Lek muttered, already completely put out of whack by the unfortunate intersecting of her patron's and master's paths with hers.

"How nice to meet you both here," Mavis said with a cheery smile. "Come, I'm sure you have time, Theodore, before your . . . what, your meeting? . . . and the salon won't raise an eyebrow, I'm sure if I insist on your company for fifteen minutes, Lek," Mavis breezed on. "Come have a tea with me in the café. I don't want to sit alone. Oh don't frown so, Teddy. You can have a beer, if you want."

There was nothing else to be done. Mavis had a voice of "she who must be obeyed," and her mind was set on an adventure. It almost seemed like she wanted to set society's teeth on edge by dragging her hairdresser into the café to have tea within the stronghold of the overlords of Asia.

The adventure didn't last for very long, though. After Theodore's beer spill and finding his hands on Lek's breast in eyesight of his wife, no matter how accidental it was, Lek fled the café, declaring that, "thanks ever so much, but I've left Mrs. Winston under the dryer."

Mavis watched her retreating figure benevolently and Theodore sank into relief, almost able to taste the bullet he'd miraculously dodged. In the silence, waiters descended with napkins to mop Lek's empty chair and to set another Singha in front of Theodore while simpering and dabbing at the lapel of his raw silk suit, even though not a drop had reached that hallowed fabric. Within seconds, the atmosphere of the café had returned to civilized levels and all was right again in the life of Bangkok's upper class bubble.

Ten minute later, Mavis floated out of the café in a flurry of wait staff bowing and scraping on the way to her art exhibit opening, and Theodore was breathing a sigh of relief at the near miss in the collisions of two of his lives.

Ten minutes after that, Theodore was sitting on the side of the bed in room 1016 of the Dusit Thani, his raw silk suit neatly folded over a nearby chair, and Lek, his wife's hairdresser, was kneeling between his thighs and closing her mouth over the head of his erect cock.

She was cupping his balls in one delicate hand, vibrating his cock with a hum deep in her throat, and running her hand over his still-firm belly with the other hand. With a sigh, Theodore lay back on the bed, and Lek rose and straddled his thighs with her knees and lowered her cunt onto his cock. Theodore came up off his back and took her nipples in his mouth as she wiggled her buttocks, bringing him ever deeper inside her. Then, with Theodore gripping Lek's hips with his hands, he lay back again and let her ride his throbbing cock like the blond stallion she whispered that he was.

* * * *

Thursday, after her session at the hair salon in the Dusit Thani, Mavis declared she wanted to go to a movie at the new cinema that had opened on Shilom Road.

"But it's an action film, dear," Theodore had said. "You don't like those. We could wait until next week and see if there's something more to your liking showing."

"People are talking about the interior of the theater, and I have nothing to say about it when they do," Mavis countered. "I want to see what they've done inside. We go today—unless, of course, you have other plans."

"No, no, of course not, darling. You always come first with me." Theodore wasn't so dumb that he didn't know who pulled the strings in his life—at least when he couldn't get his bit on the side without her knowledge, which made his philandering all the more titillating.

Mavis laughed, causing Theodore to look up at her sharply. But the smile on her face told him it was a happy, "I am pleased" laugh—and then there was nothing to be done but to tell his secretary to reschedule his afternoon appointments and to have the driver come around and take him to the theater, where he would meet his wife.

Mavis was particular where she sat in the theater. Mavis was particular about everything in life. And what Mavis wanted was what Mavis got. Generous as she was, her own needs always were served first. There were plenty of empty seats in the center section, but Mavis picked out one where Theodore would be seated between Mavis and a young Thai woman.

Theodore didn't mind the woman next to him at first. She was young and buxom and alluring. But that, in itself, was the problem. Her thigh, clad in a diaphanous skirt, was pressed against his and was warm. He tried to keep his eyes and attention on the screen, but he just couldn't do it. Her perfume was alluring too, and he sensed that she was watching him rather than the screen, which was borne out as truth when he turned ever so slightly and saw that she was smiling coquettishly at him. Her hand fluttered down and touched his thigh—not where Mavis, sitting on the other side of him, eyes glued to the screen, mouth set in disgust at what she saw there, could discern, of course.

The attraction of the young lady wasn't the problem. The tenting of Theodore's trousers was the problem. She was giving him a hard on. He blessed the near-blackout lighting in the theater.

Theodore's failing attempt at focusing his attention to the screen was shattered by a groan and exclamation of disgust from his right side.

"I can't watch any more of this crap."

"I told you you wouldn't enjoy the movie," Theodore whispered to his wife.

"I came to see what they've done to the theater, and I've seen that now. I think I'll go home. No, you needn't come with me. Stay and enjoy the movie. I'll see you at home."

Mavis didn't even give Theodore a chance to be cavalier and rise and leave with her. He turned toward her in the dark, but she was already gone, vaporized in the gloom at the back of the theater. With a sigh, Theodore settled back in the seat from which he'd half risen, and then he shuddered and groaned, as he felt a hand in his lap—searching for and finding and tracing his hard cock through the fabric of his trousers.

The young Thai woman beside him had her lips to his ear and was make a suggestion and naming a ridiculously small price, and as he nodded in assent and his eyes slitted, she nibbled on his ear lobe and her hand unzipped his trousers.

Theodore moaned and moved his hips in the padded theater seat as, on the screen, the commandos repelled down the inside of a concrete block wall and opened fire as dazed, half-clad men stumbled out of the barracks building in the night, offering themselves as targets, and, simultaneously, in rhythm to the rousing, insistent music from the speakers in the theater, a mass of luxuriant black hair waved back and forth on his lap and sweet lips ran up and down his engorged cock.

"Oh, god, only in Asia," Theodore thought while he tried to contain the grunts of his satisfaction. This happened to him frequently. In Asia he uniquely was a well-built, blond stud, sought after and divinely fucked by a bevy of oriental woman, who treasured the Nordic look. Encounters like this happened to him almost weekly in Bangkok. Why would he ever want to move back to the States?

He wove his hands into the black mass of hair and guided the woman's head, pushing deeper and deeper into her throat. Releasing with a long, drawn-out Ahhhh as the firefight subsided on the screen and the good guys won one more for nation and motherhood.

* * * *

Shondra's eyes went big, and Mavis started to turn her head so that she could see what had caught the young woman's attention out in the Dusit Thani hotel lobby.

"No, don't look," Shondra said in a breath stage whisper. "It's nothing."

"Oh, do you mean that man and woman at the elevators, hanging onto each other like there's no tomorrow and stealing a kiss?" Mavis answered. Her eyes burned into the rich chocolate skin of the American embassy cultural affairs officer she'd arranged to meet with her in the Dusit Thani lobby bar to discuss Mavis's contribution to the piano concert the young woman was trying to organize for the American center. Mavis's contribution to the embassy's arts program wasn't small—in time, money, or her ability to fill the seats in the audience with rich and well-heeled patrons.

Shondra Wilkins was much in Mavis Sheffield's debt. She'd almost do anything to keep in Mrs. Sheffield's good graces—and here her inability to stifle her surprise and a shocked exclamation had landed her in a puddle of shit.

"Oh, don't hyperventilate, sweetie," Mavis said, reaching over and putting a steadying hand on the forearm of the young, curvaceous beauty she'd invited here for a drink. "That's my Teddy and my hairdresser, Lek. I recognized them before they got to the elevator. I know they've been screwing for months. They are going upstairs to room 1016 to fuck. I'll hear all about it from Lek afterward."

"Mavis!" Shondra exclaimed in surprise. She looked down at the well-manicured hand resting on her forearm. But she didn't take her arm away.

"Maipenrai," Mavis said with a slight wave of her other hand and an intimate smile on her face.

"Maipenrai? You don't care?"

"Certainly I care," Mavis said. And then she laughed. "I care enough to have opened my pocketbook to keep Teddy happy and off my bones. I know it worries him that we don't make love. So, I make sure he has all the love he can handle."

"I don't understand," Shondra said, shaking her head like she was trying to rise up out of sleep.

"I pay Lek to sleep with him. And I pay other women to, how can I put it, 'encounter' him and fuck him in unexpected ways and places. He loves it. Why, just the other day, in a theater—"

"But . . . but . . ."

"But why do I do that?" Mavis asked. Then she snorted and moved her chair around the table to where she was sitting thigh to thigh with Shondra, and she leaned her head in so the younger, gorgeous woman naturally leaned toward her as well to hear Mavis's whisper.

"I do that because it pleases me. And I do that because it pleases him too and keeps him in his place—and away from me . . . in that way."

"But if you don't love him—"

"Who said I don't love him? He's a hunk and he gives good conversation and looks mighty fine on my arm in public. And I need a man around for public purposes. Maybe it's not love, but it's at least deep like. You could say I'm deeply in like with him—and that's more than most wives can say about their husbands. He's getting the thrill of a lifetime here in Bangkok. And he's getting it from me. If that's not love enough, what is? I bet if he knew I was paying for it—that I even knew about it—he'd enjoy it only half as much."

"I don't understand," Shondra nonsensically repeated.

And Mavis snorted again, amused at how slow Shondra was on the uptake, apparently oblivious in her confusion to the hand Mavis held on her forearm, the warm thigh against hers, the now shoeless foot on top of her foot under the table, and Mavis's heavy breathing in her ear.

"God, you are lovely—and still young and vibrant," Mavis thought.

But what she said was, "You, you ninny. I don't want Teddy in that way. I want young, gorgeous women—like you. Specifically you, at this moment. Teddy will be fucking Lek for an hour or more. And when Lek tells me about it, she and I will be fucking in room 1016 too. I suggest we move this meeting of ours to my bedroom. I know you go with women. That's hardly a secret in this hedonist town."

At the mention of what they were meeting about, Shondra's mind snapped back to the value of Mavis Sheffield's sponsorship of her programs and her earlier thought that there was little Shondra wouldn't do to cultivate that patronage. And, well, she was quote well preserved—for her age. And her use of power was arousing in and of itself.

Moments later, as Theodore and Lek were fumbling with each other and with the room key at the door of room 1016, the table in the Dusit Thani hotel lobby bar had already been vacated.