The American trio split two rooms. Nancy Kirkwood and Kathy Peck together in one, Paul Lowery occupied the other. Their respective balconies looked over the Costa Garraf sand onto the Mediterranean Sea.
Viewed from the third floor, those slight waves purling upon the shore reminded Lowery of the shallow bight stretching from San Diego to Oceanside. On a calm day, the sort which fooled Easterners like himself into believing the Pacific perfectly tame.
A mutual friend had proposed the Costa Garraf beachfront to Kathy and Nancy. If one needed to be holed up somewhere, this semi-luxe Spanish hideout served as fine refuge.
Merely because they were intimates let Nancy ask Lowery to accompany them. His immediately agreeing likely vanished any doubts Nancy might've held about him or how he saw her relations with Kathy. Until her needy hour, Kathy only tolerated Lowery. Now that he stood beside her, she fully accepted him.
His gesture defined him. They weren't rivals, but equals for the sexually malleable Nancy. He could be trusted.
A woman problem required Lowery to abruptly request vacation time, interrupted Nancy's triathlete training, as well as forced Kathy's rumor-spouting sudden withdrawal from at least two golf tournaments. Lowery wondered if the other two understood that had Kathy been male and encountered the same difficulty, some badge of guy honor might've been awarded.
Yet that was the problem's crux: Kathy, a woman, troublingly entwined with another woman.
Before surrendering body and soul to Nancy, Kathy had involved herself in a previously truly, madly, deeply affair. Owing to the golfer's celebrity, and the American public's fossilized ideas concerning how its idols shall comport themselves, the pair consorted discreetly. So down low sponsors, who realized fortunes in exploiting the golfer's burnished gold wholesome female athleticism -- no absurd hairstyle, no frightening tattoos or piercing, muscular, yes, but not freakishly overdeveloped to the point of confusing her gender, beauty bland enough not to intimidate -- offered the kind of reassuring presence the right ad campaigns mined to sell galleries of consumer goods.
Not only was Kathy Peck a stalwart on the ladies pro golf tour, but, yes, she did sleep on these sheets, washed her long sorrel tresses with that shampoo and conditioner, drove this car, while also preferring to snack on those low calorie treats. America bought that Kathy Peck. That Kathy Peck appeared a proper female athlete.
Somehow the image of her eating or being serviced by another woman, using toys or having them used on her by a female intimate, and sensitive emails excruciatingly substantiated by that now jilted lover, eradicated an otherwise pitch-perfect, safe, antiseptic pitchwoman. Graphic as the sex might've been, it was with whom she indulged which would've lent the matter the most unsavory taste, an unpalatable reflux for the vast white bread market.
After a lengthy quiet period, the kind where the past wasn't buried or forgotten, but honed into needle-sharp revenge and waited ahead in ambush, Kathy's ex-lover presented an ultimatum. Her either/or meant loss. Nancy or privacy.
Thus the burrowing into an obscure part of Spain. There, Nancy and Lowery supported Kathy while she crept up on her big-girl decision. All three already suspected the judgment. Presentation remained the only question.
In this Costa Garraf idyll Kathy could fairly hide out openly. Moreover, the relatively somnambulant pace assured little distraction.
In August gays predominated this seaside redoubt. Had Kathy been a tennis player, and not a golfer, an American one at that, she might've earned more than brief glances. Unlike Lowery, who reaped long and lingering prize bull consideration. Such attention failed swelling either head.
The American friends occupied adjoining rooms. Those first few nights of the scheduled week intrigued Lowery. His imagination swirled around the couple next door.
Was Nancy as physical with Kathy as she was with him? How did Kathy sate the triathlete? Or did the pair achieve a more emotional compact? Better yet did they reenact sloppy scenes from girl-on-girl porno DVDs?
The last query made him laugh. However, once he truly thought about it, Lowery preferred her lover and his partner gained gratification through tenderness.
Would it be Nancy's long, hard, brown body constricting Kathy's rounder butterscotch form or the other way around? Who'd dominate between them? Who was the most ardent? Of course his was a straight man's view. As women, maybe they'd instinctively work out some mutual passive accommodation.
Lowery knew genuine sentiment would lard their little whispers. A man parroted what he believed further mollified women. On the other hand, women lacked this deception during sex. Women surrendered to lost restraint. Those secrets, those truths they intended keeping hidden invariably seeped to the surface. Admitted as it were, if not confessed. Often reluctantly yet with relief.
Nape of the neck, ears, elbow crooks, belly, bend of the knee, inside the thigh, tendons where they hollowed into the between legs crevice, which of them, Nancy or Kathy, excited these vulnerable spots with the best care and calculation?
Then again which one found herself in the most languid throes when soft lips and gentle fingers caressed these unlikely pleasure points? Despite the pretty pictures rampaging inside his head, Lowery conceded his ideal of Sapphic expression way off the mark.
There had to be some happy medium because skeletal pneumatic bottle blondes yelping in phony ecstasy from tongue tips barely tickling the other's pink or moaning lustily while an outrageous strap-on cored an asshole was lazy application as well as deceitful fantasy. Having bung-plowed, Lowery at least knew what noises the other end's mouth coughed.
Moaning was low on the list.
Nonetheless it was Kathy and Nancy wrinkling the sheets and heating up the room next door. The vision of those two hugging, stroking and lip-locking, perhaps even passing shy but transparent looks, aroused him. He'd never experienced heat from a woman's body like Nancy's. Was this manifestation caused by his male proximity or did she generate the same rise among women?
Contemplation of such produced some of the hardest boners in his life. Lowery promised himself that one day soon they must discuss relative sexual merits. Who knew? Maybe he'd learn something. Improve a technique, no?
A knock on the door startled Lowery. When he wasn't wondering how Kathy reflected in Nancy's copper eyes, or how Nancy shone in Kathy's gray irises, Lowery skimmed the Barcelona newspaper. Today he'd bought the correct edition, the Castilian one. Their first full day he'd mistakenly grabbed a Catalan copy. His Spanish couldn't bridge the regional dialect.
By the knock, Lowery knew his visitor wasn't a hotel employee. The rap sounded nowhere near deferential. Probably some fellow guest engaged in a process of elimination after having either forgotten or misplaced the particulars of an earlier casually made acquaintance. Or maybe somebody just out to get lucky.
Lowery rolled off the bed. He swiped his shorts off the writing table chair back an covered his thighs. Forgetting a basic rule, he went to the door, opening it without asking who stood outside.
Kathy looked up at him. She requested entry. He moved aside. Her short-sleeved blouse, culottes and espadrilles entered far enough to allow him to close the door.
Lowery never expected them to be together without Nancy. After all, Nancy was Kathy's crying shoulder, also her sounding board. He figured his role consisted of masculine presence so the women wouldn't suffer molestation. In the Spanish sense.
Kathy hoped she hadn't interrupted anything.
"No," Lowery said. "Just reading in the local paper how everything is going to hell and glad I don't live here to pay for any of it."
Kathy smiled thinly at his little drollery. It was her first unforced grin. He hoped it wasn't accidental.
She strode towards the sliding screen balcony door. After an idle moment, Kathy faced Lowery.
"No air conditioning?" she said.
He shook his head. "Once the sun goes down the breeze picks up. That's enough for me. Besides, when you can hear the waves over the music it's soothing."
