Niagara Falls has a hotel that's over forty storeys high. Some rooms look over the falls, and across the Niagara River from Canada into New York State. Some have a view of Clifton Hill to the East. There are many conferences held in the city, and I had been attending one of them. I'd grown accustomed to having a drink in hotel bars until late on trips like these, and never with fellow conference-goers. That felt too much like work to me, and I valued my time alone and away from the day's fray. On this night, the weather was freezing rain, and the bartender, a woman in her thirties, mentioned that she wasn't looking forward to her forty-five minute drive home tonight - that she couldn't face driving in freezing rain. And I sympathized. She and I had done a couple of shots together by about midnight, and had begun to chat as the bar emptied. Her name was Karen.
Karen mentioned my ring. I acknowledged. I told her that I'd be up late, and if she'd like a night cap, and to use my shower after her long shift, she was most welcome. And that the rooms were nice here. She rolled her eyes. Obviously I had made genuine attempts at flirting using playful discourse over the last couple of hours. They landed with the efficacy and adhesion of bad puns, at best. We did exchange numbers, however, and I left the bar.
Karen was blonde, and a worker. She was muscular from what was probably years of hoisting kegs and stacks of glasses, and she moved quickly and purposefully at her work. Her attractiveness was in her wry wit; intelligence shone through her banter. Her breasts were average and hips were narrow for a woman her height, I had thought, and her tummy pretty tight - another sign of her physical work activity. She had wide blue eyes and bleached white teeth. I reflected on her appearance up the elevator, poured myself a drink and masturbated to her the moment I stepped into my room. I came into a hand towel. I didn't bother to turn off the lights. Who would be looking up to the forty-first floor? Besides, I liked seeing the reflection of the straight back and forward thrust hips, cock-pulling profile that was keeping me company, in my floor to ceiling windows.
My wife would never text at 2:10 a.m.
Karen had locked up for the night, walked to her car which was parked above ground, and had texted to ask me if I had an ice scraper in my car, as hers was entirely coated in a thick sheet of ice, compliments of minus three degrees weather, a stiff wind, and the frigid spray from the Falls. I texted her my room number, 4101, and explained that she was welcome to retrieve my car key to help herself to one of mine, so long as she returned my key.
There was a pause before she replied.
'No fucking way.'
What? ...the three dots indicating that a text was being written...
'I'm deathly afraid of heights.'