The clock on the wall ticked too slowly. I was sure that it wound backwards each time I blinked, but my eyes went dry whenever I tried to catch it doing so. An odd thing to keep in a waiting room.
It *was* a waiting room, I’m sure of it. I think it was, anyway. There were chairs arranged around the perimeter, and a toneless beige paint on the wall, which qualified it well enough in my books. If only I could recall what I was waiting for.
“Mr. Murphy,” he said, coming around the corner, “if you’re ready.”
I supposed I was ready enough, given how long I’d waited. How long had I waited? I wouldn’t let on that I was thoroughly befuddled, not to this newcomer anyway. He stood there in the doorway, looking at me expectantly. Badly balding, dark rimmed glasses, short, and holding a clipboard, he couldn’t have looked more like the most generic office functionary if he’d tried. I nodded and stood, and the slight man bade me follow him into the hall beyond.
Stepping into the corridor outside the waiting room, I looked about, determined to locate myself in some place familiar. Doors dotted the length of the hall, with other concourses branching off at random. The lights flickered and hummed annoyingly. Of course they did.
“Well, go on then” the little man instructed, gesturing vaguely around with his clipboard. I was clearly meant to lead him on from here. I couldn’t let on that I didn’t know where to go, so I picked a door nearby at random and made for it.
“Sure,” he said sarcastically, “why not that one.”
“Look man,” I began, ready to tell him off.
“No, no, that’s fine. It makes very little difference in the end.” He pulled a pencil out of his shirt pocket and erased something on the clipboard as we came before doorway.
“Number fourteen” I read aloud, finding a brass tag affixed to the front of the door.
“Well, fourteen” he corrected.
“What?”
“It’s just fourteen, not number fourteen” he said with a wave of his pencil, as though explaining to a toddler that the sky was blue.
“Does it matter?” I asked, thoroughly tired of the man’s pedantic airs.
“I suppose that’s up to you in the end” he retorted with a wry chuckle.
I grew tired of trying to puzzle out what he meant, and opened the door wide.
A living room, modestly furnished, lay beyond. It was unremarkable, and no more familiar to me than the rest of my surroundings, but for the woman on the couch; my 10th grade girlfriend.
“Jenny Browning?” I exclaimed. She sat there, idly flipping through the channels on her TV, seemingly oblivious to my presence at her door. I looked to my companion, who was busy stifling a yawn.
“Mmm? Oh, sorry,” he mumbled, “yes fourteen for Ms. Browning.” Another mark on the clipboard.
“Can she see us?” I asked.
“What do you think?” he replied, reaching past me to pull the door shut. I opened my mouth to protest.
“We don’t have all day,” he insisted, cutting me off, “we’ve many more to get through.”
The next door, bearing the number two, opened into the back of a rattling mail truck as it drove down the road. The old redhead who did the parcel deliveries in my building wrangled with the wandering wheel before her as she bumped along. Again, the little man pulled the door shut after only moments.
The next door, fifty four. A small storage closet where a woman all too familiar to me rummaged among some boxes, wearing the green apron synonymous with a popular coffee chain.
“Becky,” I said in shock as she pushed boxes aside in search of something, “we dated for like a year.”
“Fascinating” the man said sarcastically, cataloguing whatever it was he needed to.
“Hey now hang on,” I insisted as he pulled this door closed too, “what’s the big idea here, huh? What’s going on? I don’t know where the hell I am, who you are, what these people have to do with any of…”
“Look,” he stopped me cold with an upraised hand, “I just have to make sure you get through these, okay? Open the door, take a look, move on. I don’t make the rules, alright?”
“This is a dream” I said, not seriously. It was never a dream.
“This is *obviously* a dream” he replied, pushing another door open. Nineteen. My mom’s friend Tara sat in the waiting room of a car dealership, flipping through a magazine and kicking her flip flop back and fourth.
We carried on. Five, the front desk girl at work. Seven, a woman I’d done a group project with in college. One, a lady who’d dropped off my Door Dash order two weeks ago. Forty seven, my college roommate Kevin, typing away at a laptop in a home office. One hundred and ten, my cousin Jeremy’s girlfriend scrolled through Instagram in a cafeteria. It went on like this for a while, mostly women, a few men, all seemingly unaware as I peered in on them at work or in their homes. I knew or recognized them all, if somewhat vaguely in some cases.
“How many are there?” I asked after maybe two dozen doors. The little man checked his clipboard.
“Two more” he replied dryly. We turned a corner.
“Hang on there’s three doors here” I said. The little man shrugged.
“That second one is new, by the looks of it.”
“What do you mean, ‘new’? I just asked you like two seconds ago!”
He smiled, quite pleased with himself.
“We’re very quick, you know. We don’t miss much.”
Disregarding him, I opened the closest one, electing to leave the ‘new’ one another minute. Fourteen, again. My American Lit professor from college hunched over a stack of papers, red pen scanning one before her. For a woman twice my age, or more, there was something unbelievably alluring about her. I’d had the biggest crush on her.
“Dr. White” I mused to myself as we moved on. I had so far resisted the urge to work out what the numbers meant, or who the people had been in relation to them. This was, by my partner’s admission, a dream; there was no use arguing with the unknowable logic of fancy. We approached the ‘new’ door. The brass tag read “1”, lacking the aged patina of some of the others.
A slight woman, about my age, lay in repose on her bed, cotton underwear around her ankles, shirt still on, with an industrial looking wand pressed into her unkempt bush. Her brow was furrowed furiously, eyes screwed shut in concentration. Curiously, the little man didn’t close the door immediately. Feeling guilty at looking in on this most private of moments, I peered around the room at anything other than the woman on the bed. I’d seen enough to recognize her as the girl who’d just moved in across the hall.
“This feels a little personal man, I don’t think we need to hang around,” I said to her ceiling as she began to emit stifled whimpers.
“Well we might as well wait a second. Save us a trip back, you know?” Surely he knew that I did not.
She pressed the wand hard into herself with both hands, seemingly pleading with herself to cross the finish line with what remained of the breath she held fast to.
“ComeOnComeOnComeOnPleasePleasePlease,” she muttered with trailing desperation, “JustOneMorePlease.” Her perseverance paid off, and she began to shudder happily in her success. The man stared at the door expectantly, pencil hovering above his record.
“Aaaaand…” he droned, faking some anticipation, “two. There we go.” He punctuated some measure on his sheet. The girl on the bed flipped her toy off and let her arm fall to the bed next to her, exhaling contentedly.
“Wait just a fucking minute!” I yelled as he pulled the door shut on her room, “Is that what this is? Is that what the numbers are?”
“It’s looking an awful lot like it is, isn’t it?” he explained in his dry, bored tone. God, I hated him.
I stomped past him, staring daggers at, and through, his beady little eyes. Looking forward to ending his sick little game, I prepared to open door the last of these cursed doors, number…
One thousand three hundred and sixty seven.
No matter how hard I blinked, squinted, and focused on it, the number refused to be believed. My diminutive little guide caught up to me and chuckled, whistling softly at the digits on the door.
“Now that’s gotta be some kind of record. I haven’t seen something like this all week. You gotta watch those ones when you wake up; they can be trouble”.
“I don’t even think I want to know at this point,” I said, near whispering in my disbelief, thinking back to the number on my old roommates door. We’d shared a shower. He used my towels.
“Well,” he said, almost sympathetically, “you know just as well as I do that this doesn’t quite work like that.” He leaned over and pushed the door open for me this time.
“What the hell…”
I’d never seen her in my life.
___
I awoke, as you might expect, with a shuddering, gasping start.
7:29am, as far as my alarm clock was concerned. Saturday morning.
Somehow expecting my room to look or feel differently, I was awash with relief to realize that I was awake, truly. None of the sluggish unreality that often outed your dreams as falsehood were present. The angles of the room all made enough sense to assure me that I had, blessedly, awoken to the realest of worlds.
Accepting that the combination of YouTube rabbit holes, late night munchies, and flagrant self abuse that had become habitual before bed again might have all combined to manifest the debauched little accountant and his backrooms of perversity, I did my level best to get on with my morning and forget the entire ordeal.
In direct defiance of the usual laws of such things, I realized halfway through scrubbing down in the shower that the images refused to fade from my mind. I never remembered dreams at all really, and yet I could still picture every detail of the rooms I’d looked in on, and the stale carpet smell of the halls, and the wet sniffling of the little clerical creep who’d accompanied me.
Brushing my teeth, I resolved to remember who all I had seen in those rooms. There were some obvious standouts; I was confident that all the women I’d ever dated for more than a few weeks were in there. Obviously, there was the matter of Kevin. I admired my half-heartedly maintained physique with pride as I recalled Professor White and the fourteen compliments she’d apparently paid me in her private time.
Some, I mused while dressing, were more enigmatic. The guy at the convenience store on the corner and his eighteen measures of appreciation confused me; he was such a grump whenever I was in there. Maybe that was part of it for him; refuse to give me the right change and then go home to fondly remember the interaction. The front desk girl from work, too, surprised me; I don’t think she’d ever so much as made eye contact with me outside of telling me to stop forgetting my key card. The appearance of no less than four of my mom’s friends was…something.
I’d almost, as I slugged my bag across my back and reached for my housekeys, succeeded in ignoring the most obvious outlier of the bunch. Someone, some unknowable, mysterious, shadowy figure had rubbed it out nearly 1400 times to me. For me. While thinking about me? At any rate, the exact qualifying conditions mattered little. The number was genuinely, unquestionably, absurd. Obscene even.
I made my way to the elevator, grinning knowingly as I passed the door of apartment 503, sure that the occupant might well still be lying there in the fading bliss of her morning glory. I wondered if it worked like that, in real time. I mean, if it worked at all. Surely it didn’t, right? Dreams don’t come true. Do they?
Sure they do, I decided. After all, why not? I was a good looking guy, funny, tall, hard working. Why wouldn’t people think about me while they jerked and rubbed themselves? Still, I thought as the city bus bumped me along downtown, thirteen and a half hundred times had to be unhealthy. Even assuming that I was the only person she thought about, she’d have to have cum every single day for the last three and a half years while thinking about me.
Who, I wondered as I got off the bus, in their right mind would commit to that sort of thing? I had no obvious stalkers, and hadn’t recognized her at all besides. I mean, she was gorgeous enough; I’d definitely have remembered a face like hers. Dark hair in loose curls fell about a tan face that framed warm eyes and and a wide smile, just the sort that always spun me out into hopeless daydreams. Not slim by any means, her figure had seared itself into my memory with every mouthwatering curve. The skirt she’d worn in the snapshot I’d been stretched enticingly over wide, soft hips that I’d have happily died to put my hands on. The modest cut of her top had shown just the barest promise of what was sure to be the most astounding cleavage. The glimpse I’d gotten was of her in a breakroom of some sort, picking away at some sort of breakfast, scrolling absentmindedly through her phone. There were no clues that offered any meaningful solutions as to her identity, and certainly none to suggest her prolific deviancy. She looked, for all the world, like any other woman you’d fall for. Well, any woman that I’d fall for anyway.
I beat a hasty track up the steps of the building I worked in. I won’t bore you with the details of my profession; suffice it to say I spend a lot of time looking at spreadsheets and working weekends. At least coming in on Saturday meant I could forgo the need for a tie and jacket; it was unlikely there would be more than a few people upstairs. I let myself feel a moment of disappointment that the front desk girl didn’t work weekends. I’m not sure what I would have done if she’d been there though. I’m certain that making eye contact would have been the most I could have managed.
I settled in at my cubicle, sprawling the contents of my bag out messily across my desk. It was audit season, and I had a mountain of data to pull before the independent review team showed up on Monday. It was an enormous pain in the ass, but it had to happen, and no amount of putting it off would change that. Headphones on, laptop open, I dove in.
The work went well, if somewhat slowly, and by mid morning I was beginning to suspect I might perish of boredom. I hit the ‘compile’ button that would dominate the resources of my terminal for several minutes, and stretched back in my chair, yawning.
“Sleeping on the job again dick nuts?” shouted Jeeter from a few rows over, thoroughly terrifying me.
“How long have you been over there?” I hollered back, having not registered his arrival.
“Just got in,” he replied, approaching to lean on the flimsy wall of my vocational prison cell, chewing his gum like he was allergic to keeping his mouth closed, “you?”
“Yeah I don’t know, I think I got here around 9:00 this morning.”
“Yeah, nice,” he said, not listening as he peered conspiratorially around the office, “Hey you got that audit thing starting Monday, right?”
“You work on my team dipshit, you know it starts Monday.” Jeeter was a lot of things, but bright was not frequently among them.
“Sure, yeah. Hey did you hear?” he continued, still glancing around suspiciously.
“I heard your mum’s affections can be rented by the hour.”
“Fuck off, asshole” he laughed. “They sent the auditors in early. One of ’em’s already in the boardroom. Shit’s everywhere.”
“Explains why you’re here then I’d imagine” I teased, knowing he was nowhere near ready to contribute his data.
“First, fuck you. Second, I’d have been here before the fucking sun came up if I knew who they’d sent.”
I asked him to clarify.
“Bro,” he whispered, eyes flickering furtively toward the boardroom, “I don’t know what the fuck a woman like that is doing in accounting. It’s fucking criminal.”
I still didn’t catch his drift.
“It’s like,” he clarified, drawing the outline of an hourglass in the air with his hands as he whistled, “you know? Unreal body on her. Forget spreadsheets, I wanna spread…”
“I’m sure you do, tiger,” I laughed, craning my neck to try to spot her through the glass wall of windows surrounding the conference room, “but maybe you should work on being useful for a change and get your numbers pulled before she fucks you out of a job.”
He pulled a face, but conceded the point and slunk away to get his work done.
Another hour passed in productive silence, only broken occasionally by Jeeter cursing at his computer. Shortly before lunch, my phone dinged with a text message. Jeeter. I was sure it would be some shitty meme.
+ My guy, did you see her yet?
I replied that I hadn’t, that I wanted this done so I could get home.
+ You’re a whole ass clown dude
+ Hang on
+ like always, gotta do your dirty work for you…
I observed with a grin as I watched Jeeter stand at his desk, run his fingers ineffectively through his disastrous haircut, and walk too slowly past the bank of glass panes that served as the north wall of the room, before circling back around to his desk. A moment later, my phone dinged again.
+ [Attachment: 1 Photo]
It was blurry, and the angle was atrocious, but there was no doubt to be had; my heart forced itself violently into my throat and my chest tightened as I recognized, with the most painful clarity, Ms. 1367.
I think I set a land speed record as I packed my bag ran out of there.
___
The next day was torture. Knowing that I’d be facing her first thing on Monday morning almost destroyed me. I stared at the photo Jeeter had taken of her obsessively, willing it to be anyone else, trying to spot some detail that
would prove her to be someone she wasn’t. The proof wasn’t there, though; it was definitely her.
I hardly slept all weekend, and certainly not more than an hour or two Sunday night. Despite my earnest pleading to God above, I was not hit by a bus, car, meteorite, or lightning bolt on my way in to work. I looked a wreck as I slunk through the lobby, not even brave enough to check for the receptionist’s glance as I drifted by. Choking back my terror, I pushed through the last set of doors to the department.
The place was abustle with activity, which meant I might skate by unseen or unnoticed. Maybe I’d luck out and have a fatal heart attack at my desk before I had to present my report to her team. I decided to lend some aid to the prospective explosion of my arteries by fixing myself a coffee from the kitchen.
The machine made some heinous sludge that couldn’t legally or morally be called coffee, but I needed it to overcome the sleepless agony of the weekend. I bullied myself into steeling some resolved while I stood there waiting, knock-off Keurig screeching and slurping along angrily; she couldn’t possible know what I knew about her. Surely I could keep it together long enough to run through my slides, hand her my report, and leave the room without vomiting on myself. There was no reason at all to let on that I suspected her to be the worlds most prolific masturbator, or to indicate that I was aware of my role in her private sex life. There was certainly no cause for me to give any impression at all that I’d spent the last 48 hours alternating between wondering where she knew me from and what she looked like naked.
“That thing sounds awful” said a woman from behind me, genuine concern in her voice.
“Yeah, well,” I replied, back turned to the source, “Bertha’s got just what I need this morning.” I was pleased at the chance to practice keeping a level, casual tone. She laughed cheerfully.
“You call it Bertha? I guess it fits; she sounds like a Bertha alright.”
Of course it was called Bertha. It had been called that for years. Not as a slight to Berthas universally, but because it sounded like it’s namesake, the CEOs wife, tossing her cookies in the bathroom at a Christmas party several years ago. I chuckled as I turned to address her.
“You must be new here…”
You’d be correct in guessing who stood there, mere feet away, in that tiny kitchenette with me.
“Oh fuck” I said.
“Oh fuck” she said.
“What?” we both said. Confusion replaced panic in an instant.
“Wait what do you mean ‘oh fuck’?” I demanded. Her eyes could not have been any bigger, wide open with fright.
“Nothing” she insisted, an octave higher than she’d previously spoken. She stood stock still, water bottle in one hand, report forms in the other. She wore a yellow dress, a standout landmark of color among the drab attire of the other office staff, serving to blur all else around me from view.
“No no, that was something” I insisted.
“You just startled me”
“You startled me” I accused in return.
“Only when you saw me.” She was sharp.
“That dress is just…” I was grasping at straws, my mouth and brain losing touch with one another.
“Excuse me?” Indignation from her now; she had the upper hand on me firmly. “What’s wrong with my dress?”
“Nothing! It’s just bright.” Bertha grunted out the last of my coffee behind me. She squinted at me, seeing through my bullshit a mile away. It was an effort not to focus on how cute her scrunched little nose was. It was very cute. I tried a grin, surely failing to make it look less stupid than I’d hoped, but she did soften slightly.
“We don’t have to do this” she offered knowingly.
“I don’t know what you mean.” More of the ‘you’re full of shit’ expression. It was a good one, as far as those went. She looked around.
“Is there somewhere we can go? A room or something?”
“My cubicle?”
“Something with a *door*?”
I clued in. Stepping around her to look in both directions, I hatched my plan with her. She obviously knew me from my face, and behaved as though I ought to recognize her too. Maybe she’d dreamed the same thing I’d done. Maybe. It didn’t add up though, not enough to satisfy. I told her how things would be, offering a solution that I thought acceptable; we’d get through the day as best as we could, and meet later to air out the obvious elephant in the room.
“I’m not going to your house, I don’t even know you!” She insisted, taking issue with the plan I’d sketched out.
I laughed then. I wasn’t the only one full of shit today.
“Oh no? Is that what we’re going with?” I refused to speak the obvious out loud. Her cheeks flushed, and she made busy inspecting the tiled floor for a moment. Plucking herself back up, she set her water bottle down on the counter behind me, too hard.
“Fine. Fine! You know what,” she produced a pen from the bundle she carried, obviously wrestling with the inevitable, “have you got a card?” I handed her a post-it note from the fridge that warned against stealing other people’s lunches. She scribbled something on the back and shoved it into my hands.
“7:00 o’clock then. Don’t make me wait.”
With that, she turned on her heel and stomped away.
___
Thankfully, the team that had come with her was large enough that I was able to focus on some of her colleagues while I reviewed my data with them. She spoke only once, and only when prompted by her boss to ask about something specific. Aside from that, she barely looked at me during my presentation. Afforded some courage by the obvious guilt she was demonstrating, I thought I’d be a little cheeky and slapped my report directly in front of her as I wrapped up and left the room. I’d gone too far though; her mumbled ‘thanks’ was dejected enough to make me feel like a bit of an asshole.
The rest of the day was a mixture of going through the motions of my work, blowing off Jeeter’s invitations to go out that evening, and trying to make things right with the woman who’s name had been given as Allie during the meeting.
Having her name did nothing to jog my memory; it was still a mystery as to when or how I had made such an impression on this woman. My confidence that the dream I’d had was in any way real began to wane again. The only thing still giving me any confidence in the odd little man and his profane maze of mysteries was the fact that she definitely, undoubtedly knew me somehow, or knew *of* me. Whether she’d made a habitual routine of thinking about me while masturbating was yet to be seen, but I clung to some small hope.
The clock read 3:57pm. I’d be another hour at my desk, but Allie’s team was done for the day, and the dozen members of her group began to file out of the boardroom to depart for whatever hotels or motels they were staying at. Allie came last and, to my very great surprise, came right up to me.
“Hi” was all she managed. She was nervous. My earlier play had been too much after all.
“Listen, I feel bad. It’s okay if you want to skip this; you were right, we don’t have to do it at all” I offered in earnest contrition.
“You don’t want to?” she asked. I’d have expected relief, but read notes of disappointment instead. That was something.
“No! No, I do. I’d like to, yeah,” I was stammering. “I didn’t know if you did.” She pursed her lips and nodded vigorously.
“I think we should?” she said, some resolve in her voice despite the quizzical inflection.
“Yeah. Yeah I think so. For sure.” I was melting under her look again. Knowing how hard she must have worked to summon the courage to come over here and power through this conversation with me was wholesomely moving, and her expectant expression gave way to a relieved smile that just…got me.
“Okay,” she said, “I will…see you at seven.” She didn’t turn quite fast enough to hide the way her smile bloomed into a full on grin.
I hated to see her leave, but I loved to watch her go.
“Jesus CHRIST dude!” Jeeter said sleezily as he appeared from nowhere to lean over the wall of my cubicle, “Did you get her number or something?” We both watching as she glanced back before slipping through the doors. I swear she bit her lip.
“What? No man, fuck off. I forgot to give her something, that’s all.”
“I’ll tell you what I’d like to give her dude, good god.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, turning to get my things into my bag, “I’m sure she’d be thrilled with both your inches there, big guy.”
“Whatever, you jerkoff. And it’s four and half, thank you very much. Your sister loves it.” That wasn’t a joke; he had been casually seeing my older sister for a while. “What’s going on here anyway, you packing up early?”
“Yes, yes I am,” I replied smugly, “my shit is done, my report is in with the bean counters, and I spend enough of my weekends here to justify an early Monday.”
“So you can come to DeeJay’s tonight then? Come on man.”
“Nah, sorry dude,” I said in mock disappointment, “No can do.”
“Why not, huh?” he begged as I flopped my jacket over my shoulder and turned to leave, “we both know you’re just gonna go home and beat it all night again.”
“Nah man,” I said, already walking away, “I got a date.”
The names and curses he shouted at my back as I walked out were all the satisfaction I needed.
___
Believing our interaction to be a sign of better things to come between Allie and I, and wanting to make up for the modest pressure I’d put on her boundaries during the day, I resolved myself to making some effort for her. I stopped at the barber across the street from my building for a trim and cleanup, letting the indeterminate ramblings of old Giuseppe and the rhythmic clicking of his scissors clear my head a little.
“You’re distracted, my boy,” he observed accurately, “girl problems?”
“Not problems, I hope. Not today.”
“Well then,” the old goat chuckled, “I’ll do the hairs on your head, but the rest of them are up to you, got it?” We shared a laugh, and I felt a swelling in my chest; I had no clear plan going into tonight, but the day felt like a good one to make the most of opportunities on.
I did shave too, down there, just so you know. I wrestled for an age with whether to look like a try-hard and put a different jacket and tie on, or appear casual and show up in what I’d worn to work that day. Did I want her to think it was a date? Wait, was it a date? Was I inventing things here? Did I wear a jacket at all, or accept that this was likely to be enormously uncomfortable and slum it in a hoodie and jeans. What would she do? She’d wear the same dress, right?
Right?
The dress? The one that I’d stared at her in all day? The one with the pleated skirt and cinched waist that had tried, and failed, to live up to the gorgeous body it draped itself over? The bright yellow number that commanded the eye of every red-blooded man in the building for eight straight hours. The dress I wanted more than anything to help her out of…
I realized I was standing there with my toothbrush held motionless in my mouth as I drooled onto my chin. I spit out the remaining toothpaste, changed the shirt I had slobbered on, decided against the tie, and checked the time.
It was a half past now or never.
___
The cab dropped me off under that awning of the covered carport. I hadn’t bothered to actually check what the place was, but asked the driver if he was sure this was right; most of the external review teams we ever dealt with were from out of town, but few of them stayed at the Hilton, of all places.
Satisfied that he’d brought me to the correct address, I went inside. Too late, I realized that the sticky note only read “321 York Blvd, 7:00pm”, with nothing to indicate a room number or further instructions. I didn’t even know her whole name; I’d look like a bum if I walked up to the concierge and asked for Allie without any further information. Cursing my shortsightedness, I opted for the only other reasonable solution: the bar.
I’m not given making a habit of drinking alone on Monday nights, but two fingers of good bourbon were sure to temper the rising flock of butterflies in the pit of my stomach. God, I wanted this to go well. Minutes dragged painfully on while I considered my options. I couldn’t sit here all night, but surely she’d realize what my absence meant and come looking for me. I moved down a couple seats to afford a better view of the elevator. The barman brought me another drink.
7:16. Surely, if she was going to come down, she would have by now. Maybe I was a fool for thinking she’d come down at all. The entire thing began to feel outright silly again, as it had done intermittently over the course of the day; a perverted apparition had shown me the faces of all the people who had touched themselves while thinking about me in a dream, and now I was waiting for some woman I didn’t know to come explain why she’d done so well over a thousand times. I drained the rest of my whiskey. I was going home. Fuck this.
As if on queue, summoned by the finality of me slamming my glass on the cocktail napkin, the leftmost doors of the elevator bank parted. Allie stepped out.
This was definitely a date.
Though I was entirely underserving of an ounce of her time, attention, or consideration, this woman had apparently devoted the intervening hours since our parting to every measure of ‘getting ready’ known to mankind. Her hair swung in weightlessly cascading tresses, obviously having been done since I last saw her. Something that looked to be the distilled essence of pink jelly beans and whatever makes diamonds sparkle coated her full lips. Sure that eyelashes didn’t spontaneously double in length in an evening, I nearly forgot to appreciate the rest of her undeniably beautiful figure while I let myself get lost in her searching gaze. I did wonder, for a moment only, why anyone would pack the dress that she wore to go out of town for a focused accounting audit; the black number sparkled with a thousand shimmering points woven into the fabric as she turned this way and that in the lobby, trying to spot me. The way it hugged across her lower tummy, in the way that a dress really should, combined with the plunging neckline in a way that almost struck me dead in my seat. I almost wished she wouldn’t spot me; I was nowhere near enough for her, and the view was almost more than I could handle.
She did spot me though, and I responded to the bartender’s offer of a third drink robotically, without turning away from her as recognition lit her eyes. My mouth felt bone dry while I watched her approach.
“Hi again” she said, hardly looking at me, setting her clutch on the bar top and helping herself to a seat. Gone was the embarrassed, guilty woman I’d met earlier. I was familiar with the adage that a woman wearing a matching set of underwear got laid because she had decided to; I could only guess at what was under her dress, but it was painfully obvious that she’d made serious and intentional decisions in coming here looking like that. She pretended to study the cocktail list behind the bar, but a slight curl at the corner of her lips told me that she knew I was staring, and that she liked it. I needed to get a grip.
“You came.” I pointed out.
“Yeah, sorry I was late,” she said, finally deigning to look at me, if only for a moment, “it took a while to get ready”. I imagined that it had.
“Well you look, I mean, just,” I stuttered pathetically. The bartender approached with my drink.
“I know” she said devilishly, before turning her attention to him to order something fruity and blended for herself.
I’ll be honest here, if you promise not to be too hard on me. I almost bolted. I think, in any other universe, in any other possible timeline, I would have run for it. I’m a weak man with small ambitions, okay? I don’t belong in nice-ish hotel bars with women who look the way she did that night. The little man from my dream’s promise replayed itself in my mind though: “you gotta watch those ones, they can be trouble.”
I watched to watch this one.
We moved to some small talk as I milked the twenty eight dollars of alcohol in front of me. I’d eaten too little and the two that I’d guzzled before her arrival threatened to put me off kilter, but I’d be damned if I was going to be anything but wholly present for Allie. She humored me with anecdotes about travelling for work, and some of the nightmares that she’d had to troubleshoot over the years, and goaded me into sharing a little bit about myself, which came more and more easily as the hour passed. It felt more and more like catching up with an old friend than a star-crossed rendezvous between strangers.
“…and then after graduation I moved back to my parents’ place for a bit,” I said, recollecting the timeline of events that had brought me to work in this city, “which helped a bunch until I got the job here.”
She laughed, not cruelly or incredulously, but knowingly. Too knowingly by far, covering her mouth with her hand politely. It was infectious enough to bait me into joining her, if not quite as committedly.
“What? What is it?” I chuckled along with her, “What’s funny about that?”
She managed to stifle her laughter, taking a sip to compose herself briefly.
“That was your parents’ house? That whole time, you told me you lived there with your band!” She fell to chuckling again, but my own mirth faded by half as I tried to puzzle out what she meant. She continued.
“I knew there was no way you bought those sheets!” Her final few giggles subsided as she beheld my vacant expression. It was her turn to register confusion.
“You’ve seen the sheets at my parent’s house” I said rhetorically.
“Well yeah of course I have,” she said, sounding very nearly concerned for my apparent lapse of memory, “I mean, it’s not a big deal or anything. Please don’t think I’m mad! Nobody really puts themselves all the way out there like that. I mean, I told you I was in beauty school because accounting is, like, the least sexy thing in the world.” She trailed off with an expectant look, obviously hoping to head off the slight she thought she’d done to my pride.
In truth, recollection couldn’t have been hitting me harder if it’d been delivered by a freight train driven straight into my forehead. Of course I knew her. Not her face, and not well enough to recognize her body with her clothes on, but I knew her all the same.
Or, I had known her. In the months between finishing school and finally getting my first big boy job, I’d wasted hours and hours online, in chat rooms and social forums, desperately trying to satiate my need for the attentions of anyone who would let me see them naked. Being younger then, and in better shape, I’d even taken to posting myself on Reddit a few times, though I always chickened out and deleted the obscene dick picks and vanity shots of myself before anyone could open them. Propped up by some chemical courage, once upon a time, I’d actually left a post up for a few hours. It didn’t amount to anything much; that particular community was mostly frequented by men who liked the look of other men, but there was one message that I responded to. Just that one. And then they wrote back. And then they did it again. And then she asked for my Snapchat. It was a brief, torrid thing, that ultimately ended in her ghosting me entirely, but there could be no doubt about it.
“AlleyKatt” I whispered.
Seconds dragged us apart while both our minds tried to make sense of our circumstances. It dawned on her that something was amiss with me. Here I was, as far as she was concerned, remembering her for the first time; the obvious fact that I might have known her in some other way this morning didn’t add up for her.
“I thought you knew me?” she said, bordering on sounding hurt. She couldn’t know the truth that I barely accepted myself; there could be no admission of how I really recognized her at all.
“I do. I did!” I scrambled to recover, thanking my lucky stars as her features brightened anew with relief almost immediately. “It’s been a long time; I forgot your username and honestly the chances of it being you were just…well…”
“I know!” she said excitedly, fully back on the same page as me, “When you were there this morning and you recognized me right away like that, I just thought, like, ‘there’s no way he actually recognizes me now, I never even showed him my face’ or anything! I was so nervous what you must think of me, especially after that meeting, and especially with the way things ended kinda…” she trailed off to let me pick up the the train of her thoughts. I’d need to be smart.
“Oh, yeah, totally. Like, obviously I get why you never showed me your face or anything and it really super does not matter how it ended but uhh…” I was reaching again, but she saved me seamlessly.
“Well at least we’re even now,” she said, excitement bubbling in her entire demeanor, “we’ve seen each other’s faces now and you know that I was never in beauty school, and I know that was your mom’s basement, and everything is even. Right?” She needed it to be even.
I might be good with numbers professionally, but there was no way of tallying the score between us now. I offered all that I could.
“Right, yeah, very even” I faked a laugh, trying to reason out my next move. The emotions were complex, to say the least; we’d talked daily for a few months several years ago, only really about sex, and had seen each other naked more times than her entire accounting firm would ever sum up, and the fact that she evidently got bored of me one day didn’t really sting all that badly, but I wouldn’t deny that everything together resolved itself into a deep, yearning need for her, for my AlleyKatt.
“I gotta say,” she mused, unclasping her pocketbook to pay for her drink, “the fact that you recognized me by my tits like seven years later is pretty impressive.” I could work with that.
“Well, I’ve sure seen them enough times, I ought to recognize them.” She liked the joke, and giggled coyly. She carried on before I could express any disappointment that she had evidently settled her tab.
“Have you though?” she asked.
“What? Sorry, pardon?”
“Have you really seen them enough?” Her tone was different then, pitched low. It was the tone you used to say things that words couldn’t. I exhaled, hard. The flirtatious struggle for the upper hand was entirely over.
“Never” I replied.
___
If I’d thought the abrupt, wet kiss in the elevator, or the groping probe of her needy hands while her tongue forced it’s way greedily into my mouth was one thing, I was woefully unprepared for the ferocity of what she turned into when the door to her room closed behind us.
I entered second, and had barely shut the door behind us all the way before she rounded back on me, shoving me forcefully back into it, clutching handfuls of the front of my jacket as she introduced me again to the flavor of her lip gloss. My hands went straight to her hips, and I pulled her closer.
“Fuck yes,” she growled, appreciating the reciprocity, “your hands feel so good on me”. She dove back at me, tongue first. There was little art in her technique, but I cared exceptionally little.
“I want you” I told her, in no uncertain tones. It was a lie; I needed her.
She said nothing, but pulled me by the hand through to the room proper. Unremarkable and nearly indifferentiable from any other decent hotel room, an enormous king bed dominated the room otherwise filled by a desk, armchair, and wall mounted TV. The corner of the yellow dress from earlier poked out from the half-closed bathroom door, and the acrid stink of hairspray still lingered on the air.
“Sit” she commanded, pointing at the chair in the corner. I did as I was told as she disappeared into the bathroom; the door closed and I was left to my own devices. I was, as you might guess, unreasonably hard.
She’d come on like a hurricane, and it was all I could do to match her energy, but the tension of waiting in that chair while she did whatever a woman does in the bathroom before sex was killing me. I made an effort to tuck my boner more comfortably into the leg of my pants, but it refused to comply reasonably.
“Are you ready?” she called through the bathroom door. Was I? What was I supposed to be ready for? I’d have let her eat me alive if she asked for it.
“I’m ready” I replied.
Even knowing that she’d certainly take my breath away in any case, I couldn’t have been ready for what stepped out. The little black dress had been abandoned in favor of a matching black set of lingerie; lacy and trimmed in strappy purple decoration, panels of sheer, shimmery fabric offered more than suggestive glimpses of the things I wanted most. She struck a jaw dropping pose, turning a hip toward me to admire her in profile.
“Jesus Christ” was all I could offer.
Every detail of her was perfection. Her skin was creamy and soft, marked by all the spots I knew I’d recognize; a small mole here, a freckle there, I recognized them all. Her hips bore banded tracks of stretch marks that promised the most divine targets for luscious kisses, and the subtle ripple of her cleavage begged me to free her of the bra’s clutches.
“You’re gonna watch me,” she insisted, “you’re going to watch me fuck myself just like you used to.”
It sounded like a great idea to me. She stepped to the bed, still wearing her heels. This just didn’t happen to guys like me. Not ever.
She crawled up to the mound of pillows from the foot of the bed, obviously giving me the view of a lifetime as she greatly exaggerated the wide back-and-forth rock of her gorgeous ass and hips for me. There was no sign of the lacy fabric that her cheeks had devoured entirely. Reaching her destination, she turned over in a half-reclined seat, one knee crooked out to the side while the other leg stretched out straight to display the red bottom of her shoe. She rubbed her tummy and torso with one hand while a finger on the other demurely traced at her lower lip.
“Why is your cock not out?” she asked in a pouty sulk. She was all in on the attitude.
“Do you want my cock to be out?” I teased. She nodded playfully. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.
I scooched and wiggled in my seat to free myself, tugging at my waistband just enough to free myself. Her audible gasp and the needy furrow of her brow as I finally brought myself into her view did wonders for my courage. The hand on her tummy ceased its tracing and dove between her legs, rubbing atop the thin fabric slowly.
“Stroke for me please. Stroke your cock for me while I rub myself?” I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear her speak to me like this; she’d said dirtier things to me in days gone by. Still, the lady wanted me stroking, so I stroked.
She’d admitted, all those years ago, to having loved my cock. I won’t claim anything beyond what I’d expect you to believe, but I’ll describe it insofar as to call it something that I was not self-conscious about in the least. I’d never had any complaints anyway.
Her lips parted to suggest a breathy “Oh” that didn’t quite reach my ears, but the way she bit her lip and stared at the hand that I drew up and down suggested an addict’s craving within her.
“Fuck,” she practically squeaked, “I missed that cock so much”. She moved to reposition herself, drawing her feet inwards and splaying herself wide in an open display, as if to show me what it meant to truly miss something. Her hand slipped beneath the delicate fabric of her thong’s waistband.
“Keep going for me baby” she insisted. I throbbed, cock and heart both, to hear her call me that again.
“I missed you” I told her. I had, even if I was only coming to realize it now. I didn’t mean just her body either.
“You have no idea how much I missed you,” she said, unable to imagine at how wrong she was about that, “I think about you all the time.”
I knew she did. Almost daily, apparently.
We watched each other and muttered profane nothings back and forth, offering slight encouragement to one another, or asking for this move or that thing. Her hips began to draw small circles underneath her as she wriggled herself into a state. Heavy, beading drops of thin precum offered themselves as heavenly lubricant for my continuous efforts. The slick sound of my wet labors made her bristle.
“God baby,” she said pleadingly, “that’s so fucking hot.”
“Then why are you still wearing anything?” I had less than a leg to stand on, still mostly clothed myself.
“Because you’re taking forever to get this off of me” she said, slipping back to her needy pleading voice with a wry shimmy of her shoulders.
I stood, kicking the pants from around my ankles, and undid the buttons of my shirt urgently. Entirely nude, cock bobbing in the air hungrily before me, I hesitated just long enough to let her voice her displeasure.
“What are you waiting for then,” she asked in false frustration, “get over here and get me naked already.”
I mounted the bed from its foot, shuffling on my knees to approach her; her parted lips and unblinking gaze while she watched me approach continued to thoroughly melt me. Her attention was fully mine, and I lived for it.
She let me brush her hand away from where she had continued touching herself, and helpfully straightened her legs to allow me to tug her delicate bottoms down the length of her freshly shaved legs, and off past the shoes she had yet to remove; I tugged each off and tossed it off the bed. I held her legs up aloft alongside me, and bent to kiss at her calves softly. She cooed appreciatively, watching me intently all the while.
“Kiss me” she implored quietly. I let her legs down and bent to taste her lips again; she hummed quietly, eyes shut.
“I want another one” she said as we broke away. Her upraised finger to my lips prevented me from fulfilling the request as she blocked my move to kiss her again.
“Not those kisses” she insisted. I faked a look of playful confusion, and she deftly tucked a leg under and around me, so that I kneeled with her legs astride either side of me.
“I want different kisses now.”
Her plump mound was bald to the touch, and the modest parting of her flushed lips invited me in for a greedy taste. I lay flat on my tummy before her, still propped on a mountain of hotel pillows, and wrapped strong hands around her thighs from below. I hadn’t even registered when or how she found the opportunity to unhook the front clasp of the lacy bra, but was thrilled at the view of her naked chest when I looked up in search of her eyes. She maintained that scrupulously scrunched brow and modest parting of her lips, as if to eternally beg some unknowable question, while I kissed back and forth, from one thigh to the next, and above or around her patient pussy. She let the tease go on, in spite of her earlier cadence of demands for gratification and obedience.
I cut the act of pretending I could restrain myself forever; the first taste of her, a slow drawing of the flat top of my tongue from the bottom of her to the hooded top, set my mouth watering for more with its acidic tang. A small noise from her as I capped that first lick with a gently suckling kiss was all the approval I needed. I set to work.
As greedy as she was, my ravenous need for her was more than a match. Listening for the cues of her hitching inhalations and soft murmurs of appreciation, I worshiped at her for an age or more. Her feedback was indirect, but the tightening grip of her handful of my hair told me that the long, slow journey of my insatiable tongue was more than appreciated. I made frequent eye contact with her, continually amazed by how pretty someone could look while getting their pussy eaten. Her small “Ooo”s and “Oh yeah”s were music to me.
“You’re gonna make me cum if you keep licking your pussy like that” she threatened, now rocking her hips in time with my licks and clutching at my hair insistently. I chose to force her to make good on her promise, switching to focus my attention solely on the firm button of her clit, taking it gently between my lips to suck at it in a way she began to thoroughly enjoy. My roving hands found purchase around her waist and I settled in with devotional intent on what she’d just named as mine.
It took not a moment for her grip to firm up insistently; what started as a taut tremor in her thighs built to a rolling tremble. The hand not on top of my head gripped the sheet next to her, and she pressed her own head backward into the pillows behind her.
“More” she demanded, closing in on rapture. I gave more.
“Yesyes more.”
“Don’tStopDon’tStopDon’tYouFuckingStop”
I couldn’t have stopped anyway.
Gutteral grunts of a feral release replaced the already almost incoherent supplications as her hips forced themselves toward my face; she cried out in growling inarticulation, seemingly without end. I sucked dutifully right through to what I hoped was an appropriate moment of conclusion for her, expecting her to take a chance to bask in the reprieve of orgasm. Barely a moment of silence passed though before she shattered it entirely.
“FUCK,” she shouted at the ceiling with a throaty laugh, looking down at me with a disbelieving shake of her head, “that was a little too good.” The rush of endorphins prompted a fit of peeling laughter that set her heaving chest bouncing in a hypnotic sway. I wiped my chin and laughed along.
“Ahhh yeah,” she carried on, “but that’s not nearly enough. You absolutely have to fuck me now.”
“Is that right?” I asked playfully, propped on my elbows still between her legs.
“Please just shut the fuck up,” she laughed, “and give me my fucking cock already.”
There was no democracy in how she’d have me; she swung a leg over me, turned herself around, and kneeled facing the low headboard, gripping the top rail of it firmly. It would be doggy then.
I took my place behind her, nudging her legs apart further with my knees. It wasn’t meant to be rough, but a little growl from her told me she liked the treatment. Like a world-class tease, she wiggled her fat ass back and forth for me, looking back over her shoulder to register my appreciation. The rippling flesh, the look, and the arch of her back were too much. I had to have her. I held out my hand towards her face, and she took only a moment to read the unspoken request; she briefly summoned a mouthful of saliva and drew it glisteningly across my palm with a long, sloppy lick.
“Dirty boy” she moaned as I worked her offering up and down my cock, giggling deviously as I placed one insistent hand around her waist.
“Are you ready?” I asked, slapping my cock at her with my free hand. I was relieved at the high pitched “Ooo” I got for it; she loved the little tease. Besides, it’s polite to knock before coming in.
“Shut up and fuck me” she demanded, pushing backward onto the head of the cock pressed to her still-wet lips.
To call a sensation heavenly might be a first rate cliché, and understatement besides, but slipping into her was like getting home after a long time away and realizing someone had freshly laundered your sheets for you all at once. It was, aside from the obvious physical bliss, the deep seated satisfaction of remembering the forgotten word that’s been on the tip of your tongue all day long. It was like that liminal paradise of getting caught in a gusting breeze that tickles every part of you on its way by on a hot day. It was so much more than just really wet and tightly snug. It was being where I needed to be with the person I needed to be there with.
It was also damned near impossible not to flood her with cum in under five seconds.
I wrapped my hands firmly around her waist and pulled her back onto me, and she made it clear that there would be no pussyfooting around here; it was her cock, and she’d be using it to cum, right now. That was about all there was to it.
She let me pump myself into her gladly, resting with her head dropped to her forearms as she crossed them atop the top of the headboard; I couldn’t see her face, but I imagined she had her eyes closed while she moaned richly. None of those over-the-top juvenile squeals of counterfeit pleasure that every two-bit pornstar on earth lies to us with; these were the low, desperately satisfied sounds of a woman getting exactly what she wanted. I ran my hands across every surface I could reach.
“You feel so good,” I told her, “You look so beautiful with my cock inside of you.” She turned her head back, showing me a knowing smile.
“I know you love your pussy, don’t you baby?” She bit her lower lip, hard.
“You have no fucking idea” I insisted breathlessly. I was lucky to have lasted this long, honestly.
“Come on then baby, let me see it. Show me how much you love it. Show me it’s yours.” She popped herself back up, holding the headboard in her hands and pushing herself upright, arms extended. The angle was better for me, and I put in the work that she demanded.
The slapping report of our bodies clapping together beat furiously on, and we tried briefly reach each other for a kiss, which worked surprisingly well despite the improbable geometry. She spoke into my lips.
“You’re gonna give me that fucking cum, aren’t you?”
“Yes”
“My cum?” she asked as I fought the burn that was developing in my abs and thighs, “You’re going to give me my cum?”
“Yours.” It was all I could manage.
“Do it then baby, give me all of my cum. Give me my cum. Give it to me now.”
Now who could disobey a request like that?
I fell back away from her with one last kiss and summoned the last ounces of stamina I had, sweat beading freely in small streams down my chest, forehead, and back. A firm smack on her ass, and I took hold for one last push.
“YEEEEEEssssss baby!” she shouted, sounding almost maternally proud of me, “That’s sooooo good!”
I could be good for her.
“Mmmmm,” she growled again while I thundered into her over and over again. “Come on baby!” She egged on.
“Fuck don’t stop.”
I had precious little breath with which to reply.
“FUCK yes, do NOT stop.”
There was no danger of that.
“I’m. Going. To. Fucking. Cum.” she said, each word punctuated by another clapping thrust.
Her head fell, once again, backward; her wide-eyed gaze searched the ceiling in unseeing euphoria as she cried out in wordless elation. I felt her bearing down on me from within, squeezing tightly enough to tip me over the edge of the cliff and I pumped, pumped, pumped into her with reckless abandon.
“YES! Yes! Cum inside of me! Cum inside of my pussy!”
I appreciated the encouragement, but it was entirely redundant. She was already half full.
Our waning orgasm conducted the eventual stilling of our bodies; she fell forward, out of breath, and over onto her side in an impractically large pile of sweaty pillow, and I sat back on my heels, hands on my thighs, gulping for air. Her hair splayed about her face, a vacantly grinning expression was painted there in a distant look of deep satisfaction. Eventually, she looked back at me, where my own stupid grin refused to abate.
“You good?” she asked.
“Very good” was my reply.
She barked a dry-throated laugh.
“Yeah. Yeah very good.”
We moved.
I grabbed her a towel.
She giggled while she poked at the leaking mess between her legs experimentally.
I ran the shower.
She joined me.
We kissed in the fragrant, soapy steam.
She stood for long minutes with her head on my chest.
I hugged her close, and held her fast.
We toweled each other off.
We crawled into bed.
“I missed you” she whispered sleepily into the dark.
“I missed you too.”
“Do you ever think about me?”
“Sometimes. Do you ever think about me?”
The pause was short, but it was there.
“Yeah. I think about you. I think about you a lot.”
I knew that already.
“I have the weirdest dreams about you sometimes.”