She listened to the recording constantly, or so I hoped. I wanted her to play it back to herself dozens of times and re-live those three minutes of ecstasy. Three minutes, because that was all my cell phone would record.
I imagined even then, though we had spent only a few hours in each other's company, that she would want to remember it like I did, and with a kind of foresight I rarely possessed I grabbed my phone, pressed the correct buttons, and then positioned it on the nightstand beside the bed and captured the sound of us together. The next day I forwarded the recording to her number as if she were a co-conspirator in my reckless fantasy. And so I imagined her pushing the buttons on her own phone, holding it to her ear, and then again listening to everything.
There was the bed moving that particular way, painting a clear picture of our motion together. There was the sound of her high heels (which I insisted she keep on) occasionally brushing on the sheets. There was the sound of her breathing that built like a long crescendo, and her sighs that urged me to keep pace and fill her completely with each plunge.
I wanted her to listen to all of it and think about the details: the barely audible squeak in the bed, the waves breaking outside on the beach, and even the air-conditioning quietly whispering in the background.
But what I really wanted her to hear again was the abrupt and unexpected silence just before the end of the recording. That silence was from when I pulled out of her, and then from the startling thing I did next with her...
I knew even at the time it was that damn book at work. That trashy novel I was reading had invaded my thoughts and was making me view her and myself differently. That book, in spite of its ridiculous plot and silly characters, worked and invaded my mind, and so when I stopped, pulled out of her and looked down at her I saw something I didn't expect. In that silence we were both half real, half fiction.
****************************
I was bold and vain in many respects. I felt I was connected to this beauty even before I had a chance to learn her name. The first time I glimpsed the way she sat on the couch in the hotel's lobby and held her book carefully with both hands, I felt I knew something about her. I studied and measured the way she seemed totally focused on the pages of the novel and off in her own dream, and I felt I understood her in way that other people were unable to... I put a carefully chosen phrase to her: She's surreptitiously passionate, I thought.
I sat near her, waiting for my morning coffee to show up, trying not to look in her direction for fear I would break the spell and intrude on her self-contained world. From the short distance away I considered the cover of the book that kept her so absorbed and memorized the title and author's name for reference at some later point. I smiled to myself as I gathered that the two long dark shapes on the cover were actually a woman's legs dressed with fishnet stockings, and the little shimmery ends were some variety of outrageously sexy high heels.
With nothing else for evidence, I jumped to a ridiculous conclusion about her - and what she wanted in a romantic partner. A book with a cover like that was for a particular type of girl. That was what I imagined, anyway.
But the real mystery to me was her solitude. Where was her boyfriend or husband? This was, after all, one of those paradise escapes that couples dreamed of, and it hardly seemed likely that events would transpire to bring someone like her here alone... Her blonde hair did all the more to advertise her presence and set her apart from the others that milled about; she was impossible for me to ignore and I couldn't believe that she was here without company.
My drink arrived, served in a perfect little cup and saucer with sterling-silver accouterments for sugar cubes and cream, just as a person would expect from such a resort. I took in its smell and relaxed, thinking for the hundredth time that this getaway served-up a bewildering assortment of characteristics. I kept waiting for a mosquito or an insect of some sort to land on my arm -- but there were none. That was a benefit of such a small island: it seemed all the negatives were engineered out by man or nature.
My mind was sliding into a meditation then... I listened to the gentle break of the waves, heard an occasional splash from someone jumping into the nearby swimming pool, and tried to detect the language being spoken by a group of young children that scurried through. I dropped a sugar cube into my coffee and stirred. I wondered perhaps if their giggles were tinged with a Russian accent. How out of place, I thought...
Suddenly, I noticed her looking at me from that small distance away, her book to the side for one moment. She gave me a disarming glance, as if she could read my thoughts, and yet I felt that my distracted half-smile in return showed me as a nonevent. There was a polite smile from her and then her eyes were quickly off mine and back to her much more interesting reading material; I had clearly missed a chance to engage her, or at least make a few seconds of harmless tourist-style banter. I might even have learned her name.
The name I did have, however, was the author printed in bright lipstick-red on the cover of the book that consumed all of her energy. I finished my drink, signed the bill thinking that I had budgeted for only one week of this extravagance, and yet I couldn't resist another long glance at her as I left and returned to my room. My curiosity was peaked.
Once I was ensconced behind my desk I flipped open my computer, connected to the Internet and proceeded to find, purchase and download a copy of the book in question -- The Good Girl's Club. The cover image, with the long fishnet clad legs and sexy high heels, suggested the obvious irony of the title. This book was clearly not about good girls.
**********************************
As I read the first chapters I made mental notes. I tried to approach the book from my mystery girl's point of view, though I knew essentially nothing about her or who she was.