Their first time, when Chandler wanted to go down on Sandra, she'd objected, said she was "ugly down there."
"I know that's something men do to please women," she said, her clipped, mysterious accent, "But you don't have to do that, really."
And it was part of the game she was playing, or so Chandler assumed.
So he turned out the light, none of her alleged "ugly down there" visible now, and found his way between her thighs in the dark.
After some tentative exploration with the flat of his tongue, Sandra got up without saying anything, went to the bathroom and started showering. When Chandler followed, she was scrubbing between her legs with a bar of soap."
"Hon, let's face it it, that's where I pee."
Chandler took the soap and proceeded to lather her from head to foot, slow and calm. Then he'd shampooed her hair, rinsed, and finding that the instructions for the conditioner recommended leaving it in for several minutes, folded her in his wet arms and kissed her in the water and steam while the conditioner supposedly did its thing.
Then he turned the shower off and gently dried her with a big, starchy hotel towel; a different towel to wrap her hair in a turban. When he picked her up and carried her to the bed, it was as delicately as any bride over the threshold.
He lay beside her, face to face.
"Let's get one thing perfectly clear," he said. "You're beautiful. I mean top to bottom. Fingers, toes, eyes, legs... The back of your knees... I mean, I don't know if what you said is part of your act, but if you really, truly think there's anything ugly about you, you're mistaken. You've goofed. As smart as you are about so many things, this is one place where you've plainly got it wrong."
This wasn't flattery. He was being honest.
And after he'd kissed his way down her breasts, tummy, pudendum, her cool, soap-scented skin beneath his lips, the springy hair of her pussy tickling his cheeks, she'd let him plow the furrow of her sex with his tongue, shivered slightly when he grazed the hood of her clit.
Chandler continued, gradually drawing his tongue up over the little swelling, and when she responded with her hips moving and low moans and sharp intakes of breath, he took the chance of introducing his finger up inside her, started the steady, easy massage of that spongy, arching space inside, behind her belly.
She cooed like a dove before she came, wailed like a fire truck when she did, and ejaculated all over Chandler and the bed sheets.
Sandra.
Chandler had asked her name in the game and she'd responded with a train wreck of germanic consonants that Chandler would need to write down and practice before getting even close.
"You can just call me Sandra, if you like," she said, winking, and Chandler got it.
"Sandra and Santa," he said. "The Claus's"
And Chandler found that he liked the game--the whole idea of an illicit affair with The Big Guy's wife, an aura of naughty fun and no little mystery.
"When can I see you again?" he'd asked.
"Again?" she asked, somewhat startled.
"Well sure." Chandler said. "I mean, if you want to, I'd love it."
She appeared to ponder, then smiled at him.
"Well, you know, this time next year, of course."
"What? Next Year?"
"Christmas Eve," she said, and seeing Chandler's confusion, took his cheeks between her fingertips, kissed his mouth and looked him in the eye to make sure he understood.
"That's the way it is, Darling. This is the one night on your calendar where he and I are of this world, the one night we can be here sampling what it's like to be... (She looked to one side as if searching, waived her arms in a slight juggling motion.) "Human."
After a while, Chandler finally got the nerve to say, "Sandra, that's crazy."
She laughed. "I guess I'm crazy then. But only one night out of the year. The rest of the time I'm what you'd call 'Fay.' And she laughed again, told him she would be here at the Embassy Hotel, the following year. She'd love to see him again, if he was up for it. (Pun intended.)
"By the way," she said, dressing, collecting her purse, slipping into her (certainly real) fur coat, "I've always wanted to try smoking. I mean so many people still do it, regardless of how bad it is for them. I've always wondered what the appeal might be."
Later that week, or perhaps the week following, Chandler looked it up. "Fay" is one of those delightful words that has been around long enough to morph several accepted spellings and just as many meanings, and one incarnation of the word was indeed synonymous with insanity.
Another one had to do with fairies and elves.
Chandler sat at his computer and laughed. In the adjoining office, his admin, Doris, overheard and asked, "What's so funny?"
"She either wants me to think she's nuts or a pixie."
Doris, who had no idea what Chandler was talking about, cleared her throat loudly and went back to work.
The second time, and Chandler's financial affairs had flourished that year, earned him the right to consider his time valuable, but there he was on Christmas Eve with an unopened pack of Marlburoughs and a gold plated lighter on the table, ready to wait in the bar of The Embassy Hotel, ready to sit there looking foolish all night, ready to be pathetic should she never show.
Chandler waiting, wondering, the minutes passing...
Then heads turned, conversations lulled. The bartender stood up straighter and broadened his shoulders. There she was walking through the room in her Gaultier blouse, Gucci leathers, her Gabriel Hounds jeans, seemingly (but not) oblivious to the tidal effect she had on the room's attention.
"Hey Handsome," she said, sliding into the opposite side of the the booth, the booth that will be "theirs" as long as they do this.
"You made it," Chandler said, no attempt to hide his relief.
"And you did too," she said smiling. "I want you to know I really appreciate that. I know time is different for you."
Chandler squinted his eyes and furrowed his brow, and Sandra saw his confusion.
"Well," Sandra went on, "time's kind of like a tyrant for you, isn't it? Greedy despot that needs to be obeyed? For my kind, however, it's more an elected official that can be bribed. I mean think about it. How else would my husband get all over the world in one night?"
Ah, Chandler thought. Wake up Watson, the game's afoot. She wants to pick up where we left off last year. "Sandra Claus" it is, then.
Was that the year she asserted she could close her eyes, concentrate, and actually envision where her mythical husband was? "See" what he was doing at any given moment?
