Lost in Hotels (33 page)

Perhaps the legacy of that bohemian exile lingers today. No fetish lifestyle or crime goes judged as long as you’re able find an island or hilltop to build another lifetime. Ever since I met Catherine, the isolation of life on the road has begun to wear on me, and I crave the continuation of such inner thoughts with someone who finds what I find just as interesting. It’s not the physical as much as the mental that I crave of Catherine, like an inner companion who takes a two-color life and turns it into a rainbow of exponential color. When she leaves, it’s as if my world returns to black and white.

The rocks hurt my feet more on the way out of the water. I struggle to find that camouflaged stone that’s high enough to sit on to put my shoes back on. The beach is a bit busier in the distance as an older set make their way off the buses from Catania for day trips with lunch stops at the more affordable restaurants outside of town. I weave my way back along the shore and up to the road as my pace slowly increases to a steady uphill run. My shorts have now thoroughly dried. The sun beats down on my exposed shoulders, and my forehead struggles in the exposure as I try to stay tucked under the few trees that provide a space of shade along the side of the road.

The time leading up to Catherine’s arrival always seems to pass in slow motion, a mix of inability to concentrate and to solidify last-minute plans of our seventy-two-hour weekend in Panarea. I must admit, she’s a good sport to travel all this way, but my endless threats of taking an autumn break from work and following her around New York had her horrified. In the hours before her evening arrival, I have the blonde Swiss girl upgrade my room to a suite and assure the hotel car picks Catherine up promptly in Catania.

The suite sprawls from room to room with shiny parquet floors and powdery white walls strewn with satin-striped curtains that barely budge in the gusty wind. The room is sexy in a noble way with its polished antiques and gilded mirrors. The terrace wraps around the room with a ballast railing and a linen-covered pergola where two chairs face what looks like a painting of the Bay of Naxos and neighboring Greek theater. The inhospitable afternoon yields to an unexpected twilight of a rose-hued horizon framed by dramatic clouds that usually give way to booming thunder, but tonight just make a beautiful sky a little more dramatic.

Just before 7:00 p.m., the front desk rings to let me know her car has arrived. In a matter of seconds, I can hear a rolling sound echoing through the cavernous lobby mixed with the heavy heel of a woman walking. With no knock on the door or ring of the bell, the room door opens. I linger a bit on the balcony. The heavy heels circle the main room a bit before I hear her rattle a few words to the bellman, who promptly shuts the door behind him. I expect her to come out immediately, but instead, she lingers in the room as I get up to peek in to see what’s keeping her.

She’s even more beautiful than I remember. She’s also thinner than she was last time. She’s in a hot black skirt that tapers from her ass to her ankles with a simple white T-shirt that looks as if she changed in the lobby. She busies with her phone for longer than I expect, as I cough from the balcony.

“Oh my god, you’re here,” she cries as she presses long enough on her phone to shut off the power. She runs up to me, hugs me first, and then takes my lips with her mouth that smells of fresh waxy lipstick.

“I know that was a long haul, and I’m so glad you’re here.” I look into her eyes, and she absorbs the horizon that couldn’t be of lesser interest to me with her standing near.

“Look at this place, David. It’s just incredible. Is that Mount Etna?”

“Yes, and down there are the famous ruins.”

“Roman ruins?” she asks.

“Greek. And that’s the Ionian Sea just beyond what here is the Bay of Naxos. There’s a sister hotel down by the water that I’ll take you to if you want in the morning, but we need to get a fairly early start in order to get to Panarea.”

“I’m so excited. I’ve heard it’s just incredible, but seeing this makes me barely want to leave this place.”

“Maybe you should come for longer than three days then, my love.”

“I know, too bad I’m not one of your rich friends who only works professionally in order to maintain an approachable social decorum.”

“Maybe we don’t start off on that note; our time is so limited,” I say, trying to disregard her snide comment.

Catherine struggles to sit in the iron garden chair in her tight skirt. It makes me wonder at what point exactly she changed; the taxi ride and flight from Rome would have been far too impractical for such a getup.

“You look incredible,
la dolce vita
,” I say in my best accent surveying her legs. My pent-up libido makes me think of nothing else but thrusting inside of her as fast as I possibly can.

“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.