On most afternoons, the hotel's rooftop pool was theirs for the taking. They didn't know what it was—the vertigo from being on the roof above the 34th floor; maybe the sun that was too bright by half on a cloudless July day in Manila—but whatever the reasons, swimmers and sunbathers stayed away. Bill and Helen never complained.
Nor did they take sexual advantage of the rooftop solitude. Neither was much interested in exhibitionism; public sex was of no interest to either of them, and the idea of being caught frolicking underwater was unattractive to them, not personally but sexually. It just wasn't their thing.
The rooftop swims then were just that. They did laps. They took breaks for lunch. They read books, separately, and occasionally broke the silence to discuss something one or the other found interesting. This was going to be a long rendezvous before a long break. Bill was leaving the country for a while, soon, and he had booked three weeks in this hotel. After the first few days of non-stop sex, the rooftop routine had become something both looked forward to... after, of course, their long good-morning fuck.
So it was with surprise on a Tuesday morning when they walked onto the pool deck and saw two men sitting at one of the plastic white tables at the far end of the pool. Bill steered Helen toward two chairs near the closer end of the pool, far from the guests at the other side. As they spread their towels across the too-hot plastic chairs, Helen grew curious.
"You don't want to sit near them? You can talk to them. They look American."
"American? Why? Because the one guy is a fat fuck?"
Helen giggled.
"Look at the beer. It's ten-thirty. Drunk men. Not my scene."
She knew that about him, his strong aversion to men who drank too much. She didn't mention the other guests again. They jumped in the pool. For a pleasant half hour they swam, played, and joked with one another. They hadn't eaten that morning, fucking longer than usual, even for them. They skipped breakfast to get into the water. When they both agreed they were hungry, Helen agreed to dress and make the short trip out for the lunch they wanted.
He tried to read when she left but felt more like swimming. At the far end, one of the guests had taken a seat poolside, his feet dangling in the water.
"Yo, guy!"
For no reason apparent to himself, Bill stopped swimming and gave attention.
"Hey, how's it going?" He brushed the water out of his goatee.
The stranger had a direct demeanor and a look in the eye to match. In Bill's estimation this raised the man's stock considerably. The man pressed on.
"You a tourist or you living here?"
"I come and go."
"I'm Jim." He held a hand down, its wide, meaty fingers spread limply apart. Bill shook it. It had the fleshy texture of a person raised on potato chips and root beer.
"American?"
Bill nodded. "Yeah."
"So are we." The man directed a thumb over his shoulder at his friend seated back at the table. The friend was younger, much thinner, less awake. Even behind dark sunglasses his face was a poster model for a world-class hangover.
The chubby pool-sitter lifted a leg out of the water, planted his foot, and pressed hard on his knee to help himself up. He was that class of fat person whose stomach did not appear smaller when standing up. He walked back to the table, his swim shorts scrunched high between thighs that were too well acquainted. He plopped down in a flimsy white plastic seat that spread in every direction to steady itself under the load. The fat man reached down and flung open a cooler lid. Sounds of bottles being dragged through ice cubes got the other man's attention. The fat man handed his friend a fresh bottle and turned his attention back to the pool.
"Come on up. Sit. Have one."
"Not a drinker," Bill said.
"Not a drinker?" The two men at the table chuckled. "I guess you ain't been here long enough."
"Give me a second." Bill swam the length of the pool, popped himself out, and walked to where the two men sat. He toweled himself off as the fat man pulled a third chair up to the table.
"Didn't get your name in the pool."
"Bill."
"Bill, good to meet you. This is Derek."
After handshakes, Fat Jim opened a third beer bottle and sat it with force in front of Bill.
"Three American dudes enjoying the sun in the land of easy pussy, we're having a beer, guy. Drink up!"
Bill smiled and grabbed the bottle. "It's dark beer, so I'll play along, but just one."
"Atta boy."
Bottles clinked, and the men talked. They laughed at the discovery they all hailed from the same state, but opposite ends of it. This made them both comfortable and suspicious of each other, as only geography can do to people. Jim was telling a story about the first woman he had fucked in the Philippines, a fellow supervisor at the call center he managed, a local woman who gave him hand jobs in the men's bathroom. This gave him the idea he could easily maneuver her from hand jobs to blow jobs to intercourse. He hadn't been wrong. Since then, his had been a mission to find every woman who didn't mind a cock as small as the stomach was big. He was not self-conscious about his anatomy.
"I had a choice between giving up beer and getting rid of my belly. I said to hell with that. Now my gut's my best bud." He patted it when he said that. Derek laughed and the two co-workers clinked their bottles together.
Jim finished a gulp and set his bottle on the table.
"That your girl?" he said, nodding toward the other end of the pool.
The men looked and saw Helen walking toward them.
"She is. It's about lunch time for us."
She stood next to Bill so that he was between her and the chair Jim sat in. Derek was on the opposite side of the table.
"Helen, this is Jim and Derek, a pair of my fellow Americans."
The two strangers made polite gestures. Helen felt victorious.
"See, I told you they were Americans."
She chuckled. Jim said, "You guessed a fat guy must be a Yankee, right?"
"No!" she protested. "That was him who said that!" She threw Bill under the bus, but the beer and the weather and now the presence of a slender woman with a wide smile and a bikini that flashed generous tit had created a frivolous atmosphere of instant forgiveness. Helen brought the talk back to business.
