Clean Sheets and a View of the Hudson
by Ewan Morrison
‘I can’t believe we’re doing this for real,’ she said.
He didn’t want her to change her mind so he changed the subject. ‘Did you buy something special for the occasion?’ He gently ran the back of his hand over her thigh, searching for the line of her garter belt. She looked up at the taxi driver then put her hand on his.
‘I’ll bet he knows what we’re up to,’ she whispered. ‘Probably driven hundreds of people like us there before.’
He linked his finger in hers and laughed.
She was still nervous. ‘How did you find the hotel anyway? I’ll bet this isn’t your first time.’
‘Yeah and I always use the same taxi,’ he said. ‘Relax.’ Telling her to relax wasn’t helping. ‘Some hotels have “refresher rates”. Isn’t that a great phrase? Means they rent rooms by the hour in the middle of the day.’
She was fidgeting. Her confidence was fading.
He squeezed her hand and leaned in closer. ‘We could just check in and, if you don’t want to go through with it, we could . . . I dunno . . . hold hands and laugh about it for an hour.’
She turned to face him and smiled.
‘Victoria’s Secret,’ she said, ‘bought them yesterday – as you said, just for the occasion.’
He leaned in and kissed her cheek.
‘Typical,’ she said.
The Sunshine Motel was at the start of the piers, by the expressway. The ad had read ‘Clean sheets and a view of the Hudson’. As they approached it, he looked out and saw it for the first time – a building in isolation, nothing but old warehouses around it. Like a solid concrete block with windows. An anonymous functional building built precisely for the anonymous function they were about to perform. It wasn’t the Hilton.
He paid the driver with the stack of cash he’d taken out of the ATM that morning. Holding hands, they nervously walked towards the main door. A surveillance camera was above them.
‘Perhaps we shouldn’t . . .’ she said. ‘People might . . .’
‘Sure,’ he took his hand back. ‘You got your driver’s license?’
They’d been through all this already – ten times or more. At a certain point a month ago, they’d passed from questions of why they should do it to discussing the details of how. It had been an exciting time. When would it happen? Should they take a day off work or make it a long lunch? Where would they go? What name would they use? What would they say to the receptionist? They’d have to pay in cash so it didn’t appear on his credit-card statement. All the time, it was the same joke. ‘I can’t believe we’re really going to do this.’ But the growing obsession with details had pulled them, somehow, beyond doubt. Now they were here.
They stood in the reception area, struggling to keep straight faces. He hovered anxiously with the money in his hand. The receptionist looked Middle Eastern, Moroccan maybe, bored. He was behind thick glass, bulletproof perhaps. There was another surveillance camera above his cubicle window. The Moroccan looked him up and down. He lowered his head, imagining his face on some monitor that was being recorded. She was trying to have a conversation with the guy. She’d insisted on having some story prepared, about how they were tourists from out of town. Jet lag. A nap in the middle of the day, before sightseeing. But now she was struck by stage fright. The script they’d worked out was falling apart.
‘Shall I?’
‘Will you?’
‘Driver license – ID.’
‘Forty-eight.’
‘One hour or two?’
‘Do I have to fill this in?’
‘Should I tip?’
‘My signature or . . .?’
‘It’s the 23rd, right?’
“One hour or two?”
‘Room 212.’
‘Two hours, right?’
‘212.’
‘Seems a nice place.
‘Is there a view or . . .’
‘Upstairs.’
Minutes later, it was over and they were walking up the creaking stairway. A South American cleaning lady bundled sheets out of a room. An elderly white man passed them swiftly, followed seconds later by an Asian teenager who could only have been a hooker.
‘You really know how to make a girl feel special,’ she said.
‘Quite a joint, huh? Nothing but the best for you.’ He was nervous and saying all the wrong things. But he couldn’t stop.
‘See that camera back there?’ he said. ‘Maybe this place is like some professional blackmail shop. A month later, you get a photo and a letter demanding half a million. There’s probably hidden cameras in all the rooms.’
Since they’d climbed the stairs, something had happened. She’d picked up some kind of confidence and now he was the nervous one. Talking nonsense.
‘God, it’s so . . . I’m really sorry about this . . . I. Jesus. You see the décor. It’s so . . . Everything you’d expect, really.’
And it was. The corridor walls were lilac with borders. There were plastic yucca plants covered in dust. The whole place looked like a porno set. You push the walls and they’d fall over. Props.
She wasn’t paying attention. ‘Well, this is it,’ she said, pausing dramatically by the door.
Room 212. They stopped and stared. For a moment neither was sure who had they key or who was to make the first move. He tried a joke. ‘Shall I carry you over the threshold, Mrs Smith?’
‘Stop it!’
‘Am I having a déjà vu or are we in a bad movie?’
‘Maybe you’ve been here before with someone else?’
‘Here, you take the key – my hands are shaking.’
She opened the door and there it was. Bright pink. Chintz and frills. A circular mirror on the ceiling. Another one behind the bed and on the wardrobe doors. A TV mounted high on the wall.
‘Fuck.’
‘It’s a joke.’
‘Look at the ceiling.’
‘I don’t ever want to look at the ceiling.’
They locked the door, edged round the tiny space by the bed and laughed. He sat down first. She was pacing.
‘It’s so fucking clichéd,’ she said.
‘Wait, it gets worse.’ He went into his bag and pulled out a bottle. ‘Champagne!’
‘Fuck.’
‘C’mon, sit beside me.’ He patted the mattress.
She went to sit down, then changed her mind and started to look for glasses. He fumbled with the foil and the cork, looking over at her, wondering how far this would go. At any moment, either of them could get up and leave. He realized he should have got a decent room in a regular place. It would only have been another $30. She came back through with a plastic tumbler for toothbrushes and a teacup and a smile. The cork popped. Bubbly pouring on the bed.
‘You’re spilling it.’
‘Who cares? I’ll bet they have a plastic under-sheet.’
‘Gross!’
He put his hand under the sheets.
‘Yup, they do.’
She sat across from him. Holding the tumbler and the cup, impatient. It was impossible to relax in a place like this.
‘Come on – I’m not doing anything till we drink at least half of this.’
He poured, pulling a face that he thought looked like a French waiter. When he finished pouring, he turned the bottle in his hand as French waiters do. ‘Le Chateau Bordel, soixante-neuf.’
She giggled.
He wondered if she spoke French. He’d never asked.
She was fluctuating wildly between laughing at the whole thing and having serious doubts. ‘It’s all so . . . I dunno . . . Fatal Attraction,’ she said.
‘You going to boil my bunny?’
‘You have a bunny?’
‘A dog, actually.’
They knew very little about each other’s home lives – that was clear to him now. They had, in fact, avoided the subject. This was no time to start. He held up his plastic tumbler.
‘To adultery.’
‘Whatever – cheers.’
They threw the first one back swiftly and poured a second. After the next glass, he detected a change in her.
‘Mrs Smith, are you giving me a come-hither look?’
‘Might be.’
‘Shall we . . . perhaps we should attempt the kiss thing.’
‘You’re such a pro.’
She leaned over to kiss him. They banged their teeth together. Awkwardness. A cup and a tumbler and a bottle in their hands. Both on opposite sides of the bed. Spatially all wrong.
‘Sorry.’
‘We should . . .’
‘Shall we . . . I dunno . . . lie down?’
‘That would seem to be the done thing.’
They put the things on the bedside unit, lay back and stared up at the mirrored ceiling. She laughed but the laugh stuck in her throat. It was a shocking sight. Looking up at themselves looking down. An overview – which was the last thing they needed right now. For a moment he felt remorse. Thought about his wife, Sandra. The daily lunchtime call. He fought the feeling and slowly moved his hand to her breast while he looked at his movements in the ceiling mirror. There was the image and there was the touch. The two things seemed disconnected. The feel of her frilly bra, the softness of her breast, the nipple going hard with his touch. And the sight above of two middle-aged adulterers together in a bed, like two extras in a porno film, waiting for directions.
‘I can’t. That fucking mirror.’
‘Don’t look then.’
She got up. ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’
‘To slip into something cooler?’
‘Whatever.’
She took her bag in with her and locked the door. He was suddenly very alone. Surrounded by reflections of himself. He could just get up and go. Leave her here. She was obviously freaked out by the place and her self-consciousness was making him nervous. Or they could just lie here and joke about what a mistake it had been, about how they should have gone to the Holiday Inn. They’d foreseen this. But that too was too predictable. He wanted to see the damn thing through, just to make a difference. Too many times already in his life, he’d got close to something like this only to back off. It needed a bold move, a leap of faith, to turn this from a bad joke into a reality. He should have just grabbed her and fucked her there and then. Torn the panties off her with his teeth. She was taking a long time. He started to undress and looked out of the window. There was no view of the Hudson like the advert had said. They were on the wrong side. Instead, the view was of the expressway and a derelict meat-packing warehouse covered in graffiti. A sign – ‘Mario’s Meats. Quality at its best’.
Taking off his pants, he pulled out the pack of three Trojans he’d bought earlier that day and set them on the side. It had taken an embarrassingly long time to choose the packet in the deli. So many varieties. Why would anyone want flavored? It had been a decade since he’d bought condoms. Strawberry, peach, pina colada. He went for the most normal looking packet he could see. It said ‘Regular’.
Seeing himself naked in the mirrors, he became conscious of his shape. His gut – too bloated from too many years of too many beers. He tried to hold it in and then flexed his chest muscles to pump them up a bit. The flesh around his nipples was saggy. The last few years he’d been developing something resembling breasts. Some kind of hormone change. Then he caught sight of his legs. Ridiculously thin in comparison to his gut. Too many years sitting at desks, on subways and in cars. And his cock. It had been so long since he’d seen it in a mirror. He pulled it a bit to make look more substantial, got under the sheets and waited.
She was taking a long, long time in there. He could hear the sound of water running, the toilet flushing. Had she been ill? Was she taking some medication that didn’t agree with the alcohol? Was it nerves? He knew her fairly well but not well enough to know what those little pink pills were that she popped discreetly each time he saw her. Perhaps she was anxious about the way she looked. She was after all a little older than him and he’d always been too polite to ask how much. But there was evidence. Every time they met in the bar, they always seemed to be playing Bob Dylan or Fairport Convention and she’d get excited.
‘Johnny’s in the basement mixin’ up the medicine, I’m on the pavement, thinkin’ ’bout the government.’ He’d mouth along to the words with her and she’d lean over and take his hand. ‘You look so much like him,’ she’d say. Dylan she meant. They’d sit like that holding hands – their touch hidden from the rest of the bar beneath the table. They’d take it as far as they could possibly go without kissing each other. Sometimes, he’d sit beside her in the booth and play discreetly with her thighs as they talked. She’d rest her hand on his knee. He told her he loved her hair. How her ass felt so firm. They joked from the start about how corny it all was. But somehow it turned them on to be weighing themselves up against the dead weight of cliché.
‘This is a seedy pick-up in a bar.’
‘Nope. This is an accidental encounter between two soulmates.’
‘Uh-uh. You’re a cynical flatterer, trying to seduce a needy older woman.’
‘No, I’m a boy toy who’s trying to seduce a sophisticated older woman.’
‘You’re too old to be a boy toy.’
Could she really be that old though? To have been a teenager in the 60s? Right from the start he’d made it clear that age was no issue for him, that she was attractive and that he was interested only in women with life experience. He’d been straight up with her. He didn’t need a one-night stand – he wanted an ongoing thing, a mistress. Only someone old enough to understand the complexity of relationships would grasp the difference. The truth, the real truth, was, however, that he desperately needed to have an affair and he didn’t have the confidence to make a pass at a woman his own age or younger. It was like she said, he was a cynical flatterer, trying to seduce a needy older woman.
And she had been flattered. She told him how charmed she was by his attentions. It had been a while and she was a veteran of failed relationships. Her fourth husband paid her little attention and was always out of town. She wondered if it was possible to have the best of both – sex and privacy. She had to admit she’d been thinking recently that a married man might be the solution. She never thought someone younger would be attracted to her.
He was drinking more of the bubbly and she was still in the bathroom. Sounds of washing. A douche perhaps. They’d only booked two hours and were well into that time by now. He didn’t want to waste anymore time and decided that the TV might help him get an erection. He flicked the remote and channel-surfed. Eight regular channels, five of hardcore porn. A big black cock thrusting into a white pussy. He hit mute. Didn’t want to freak her out by letting her know he was watching porn. He tried working away at his dick but nothing was happening. Seeing the big cock just made him feel insignificant and there was the time factor putting pressure on him. They’d have just over forty minutes now to do everything and get out. Then there was the bubbly. He could never sustain an erection with alcohol. He’d probably drunk too much already and should never have had the double vodka for courage before he saw her.
The lock on the bathroom door slid open. He hit the OFF button and prepared his pose – an arm behind his head, the other hand resting beside his dick. He changed his mind and quickly covered his flaccidity with the sheet.
And there she was. Head to toe in her new lingerie. Basque, panties and sheer stockings.
‘Wow, you’re so beautiful.’
But she wasn’t exactly and he was conscious of the fact that he was play-acting, speaking lines as he’d done many times before with his wife. The outfit. He’d seen exactly the same outfit a week before in a Victoria’s Secret ad in GQ. The model must have been twenty at most. He’d taken the magazine into the toilet cubicle at work and jerked off to the image.
‘You don’t like it. Fuck. I feel like such an ass.’
‘C’m’ere, let me be the one who feels the ass.’
‘Silly.’
‘Don’t be such a shy little girlie.’
With each step into the room she became less and less confident as she was surrounded by reflections of herself.
‘God, don’t look at my ass!’
He didn’t want to but couldn’t help himself. Mirrors were everywhere. She had a fine ass – a fine ass for a woman of fifty or so but that was exactly the problem. He realized that the only way to get her to relax was to show her that he didn’t look so good himself. He pulled back the covers and moved to the end of the bed. He could feel her eyes on his fat gut. His limp cock. Words were failing him. They were two actors without lines – that was for sure now. They had the costume and the set but they could not perform. The only thing was to ham it up.
‘You’re a total babe.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Sorry. I should never have . . .’
Given a different scenario, her insecurities could have been seen as coy and playful. But here, now, it was clear to him that she was a woman in her late fifties wearing an outfit that only made her age more apparent. Her breasts were wrinkled where they were tucked into the tight-fitting basque. He’d never seen that before. All questions of attraction had gone but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. There was nothing for it now – forget sex, the important thing was not to hurt her feelings. There was no way he could tell her what he really felt. What he felt for her now was compassion. He felt as sorry for her as he did for himself. But to say this? No. The only way to move forward was to continue with the act and talk in ever greater clichés.
‘Get on your hands and knees – I want to look at your beautiful ass.’
She climbed nervously on to the bed. He saw now that she was wearing shoes. They were not sexy shoes at all. They were, in fact, the ones she wore all the time. Court shoes, two-inch heels, the leather worn – definitely not the pristine six-inch stilettos he’d imagined. She was waiting. It seemed she needed his guidance to give her the confidence to keep going.
‘That’s right, hands and knees. Oh, baby, baby, what a sweet, sweet ass.’
He got his face round there and looked at her. Her pubic hairs were sticking out from the edges of her tiny thong. She’d probably never worn one before. She kept glancing round at him with a worried expression. Arousal was out of the question now but he worked his dick in his hand. If he was rough enough with himself, perhaps he could force himself to feel something.
He touched her ass and slipped his fingers over her crotch. It was all too immediate, too forced. He needed some detachment. Some porn or something – the way he and his wife had used it in the last few years after they got tired of each other. He looked up. Perhaps the sight of two other people, two strangers in a mirror, might turn him on. From above, he could see that she still had a shapely waistline, in contrast to her big ass. That was something to work with. He pumped his dick faster.
‘You’re so hot – you should see yourself.’
‘I’m not doing anything till you stop looking at that fucking mirror.’
She rolled over and got under the covers. He was suddenly conscious of his nudity, of his total inability to get an erection – as if, sensing his awkwardness, she pulled the covers over her face.
‘Come under here – just give me a hug.’
He got in beside her. She had her eyes closed and was gripping the sheets round her face.
‘Just close your eyes and kiss me.’
He ran his fingers along her waist and kissed her neck.
‘Baby, baby.’
‘Stop it – just close your eyes.’
She took his hand from her hip and held it tight in hers. He closed his eyes. Her lips searched out his. For a minute, their lips moved in unison. Gentle sensitive kisses. Rhythmic and real. They were alone in the dark together. Two mouths reaching out to each other.
He whispered, ‘So beautiful.’
She shrugged away.
‘Stop looking at me.’
‘My eyes are closed.’
‘They’re not! You’re looking at me in that fucking mirror.’
‘How do you know? You’ve got your eyes closed!’
‘Just hold me. Please.’
She rolled over and put her back to him. He nibbled her neck gently and she nestled up against him. For a moment he had another déjà vu. Lying like this, spooning together, warm and intimate, eyes closed, with a woman. It felt good, so familiar. Exactly the way he slept with his wife. He clenched his eyes tight shut. It may have been the alcohol, the familiarity or the exhaustion after the stress – whatever it was, he dozed off.
The phone rang – the bell shrill and shocking. He reached over and picked it up. Mumbled, ‘OK, thanks.’ and hung up.
‘What is it?’
‘We have ten minutes.’
He rolled over and got back under the sheets.
‘What’ll we do?’
‘Get dressed probably or . . .’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, it was me.’
‘No, no, no.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No – I’m sorry.’
They held hands and stared up at the ceiling. From above, they could see two middle-aged people under the sheets. Their faces peeking out from the covers, staring out – silent and holding hands. For some reason that he couldn’t explain, he felt the need to tell her he loved her. What was it? The failure? Or the fact that the failure didn’t matter? Or some last attempt to hold on to her before she left and never saw him again? ‘I love you.’ As clichéd as the pink walls and the mirrors, as the plastic yucca and the porn. ‘I love you.’ – the words had come to mean ‘sorry’ in his marriage. Words he said every time his wife was disappointed with him. ‘I love you, sweetheart.’ Words overused and exhausted. He struggled with them. Knew they were inappropriate but felt them surging inside him. The worst possible thing to say given the situation.
‘I should get dressed,’ she said and she got up. She pulled the sheet off him and went back into the bathroom, wrapping it around her so he couldn’t see her body.
He lay naked on the bed. He knew what a pathetic figure he would seem if he looked up at himself in the ceiling mirror. She’d be a while and he had time to kill so he reached for the bottle and the remote. He hit mute so she wouldn’t hear. On Channel 6, a teenage girl was having an orgasm while a football team jerked off around her. On 7, a black girl was being penetrated by two white cocks. On 8, two Latino girls were doing each other with a double-ended dildo. He threw the bottle back, drained it dry and turned to the news. The TV was still on mute. As he swilled the last of the warm wine round his mouth, he watched two newscasters talk about some incident somewhere. Their faces seemed suitably concerned. Some story, no doubt, the like of which they’d told a thousand times before. Their mouths moved silently.
June 26th, 2009 at 7:23 am
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/23/ewan-morrison-menage-trois
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