"Oh my god!" Sarah exclaimed as we got out of the elevator at the Seventh floor, "I can't believe you talked me into getting on that rollercoaster!"
"I can't believe you had the balls to get on." I replied through a smirk. I knew the first drop was much longer than I had said, and a moment of anger in Sarah's eyes told me she knew that I had known all along and was insulted by my attempt to pass one off on her. It had been nearly an hour since I had assured her that the roller coaster was 'nice and easy.' Though Sarah's jumping and hopping around told me she was happy she'd been adventurous enough to go through with it.
Now she seemed to move in slow motion, her dress clung to her waist and thighs as she hopped around. Her small pert breasts never heaved, I've never seen them heave, they would come back up as she jumped, and snap downward for an instant when she landed again. Had she noticed me staring at them?
"Oh fuck you too."
"What?" Shit.
"I said I need to trade brothers."
I laughed skeptically and paused staring at her for a moment, "yeah? For who?"
"I dunno, Jessica's brother."Sarah resumed hopping around, hoping to recreate the sensation of the roller coaster. It was a refreshing sight to watch a woman in her forties cavort like a child.
"Charming dude," Sarah dropped down with her shoulders slumped looking like she'd hurt me.
"He hates roller coasters." Sarah said with a shit-eating grin as she walked backwards toward our room.
I peered around admiring the choice in lighting down the long hallway, they made Sarah glow like a candle light, the shadows that hugged her growing and receding as she passed like dark blankets that had animated, that could touch and caress her whenever they pleased. A shadow slunk and retreated around her slender neck-
"Earth to Jaaack, " Sarah was walking backwards calling out to me, no doubt the idiotic distant expression I wore was amusing her to no end, "you there?"
"Yeah I'm here..." Deflect! Deflect! Deflect! "How's the family?" I asked as I caught up with her.
Sarah smiled ever so slightly as she turned back and continued, "They're not taking the divorce well... Pete's going through an emo phase."
"Could have been worse." Sarah let out a chortle, neither one of us were very fond of the emo types, now her son and my nephew was one of them.
"Candice is having a thing with a 'badboy'," She said with a comical expression.
I got deadpan serious, "bad boy? What's, so bad about him?"
Sarah looked at me in an appreciative way, my chest swelled.
"He smokes pot, she says he doesn't like I wouldn't know one if they landed in my lap."
"Oh well that doesn't sound so bad."
"And he has the voice of a" Sarah paused for a moment and stared off while she made the connection, "Seagull."
We both burst out laughing for a second before I continued, "And Charles, how's he?"
"I don't know, haven't heard from him in a while."
"Probably off disappointing someone else," I offered
Sarah laughed, nodded, "Yeah... yeah, he probably is," and continued ponderously, "you know, last year I think I traumatized the kids cause of him."
What? Sarah's harmless, how could she ever traumatize her kids? "Oh? How did you manage that?"
"Well, last year Charles and I were going at it you know?"
I managed a word through my repulsed expression, "No, no I don't."
"And it's about ten minutes in, we're trying to keep quiet cause of the kids right."
"Whoa, whoooa!"
"Hold on dammit... and all of a sudden I yelled out; 'goddammit! You fuck-" Sarah began ruefully laughing, visibly ashamed of herself while I looked at her with a pre-emptive expression of horror.
"Right?" her laugh was always so contagious. I shouldn't have, but I started in too.
"So I said," Sarah's laugh reached a stuttering crescendo.
"You said?" I beckoned her continue as I held back my laughter.
"'Goddammit!' I yelled at him," She burst into uncontrolled laughter, "right there in bed! 'Goddammit Charles! You fuck like a tortoise!'"
My legs buckled beneath me as I burst into laughter too. A fucking tortoise! The imagery of a tortoise rocking back and forth at the hips and shoulders like a see saw hit me like a ton of bricks, bowling me over. Sarah and I leaned against the hallway and laughed as if no one else was in the hallway, or the hotel, we laughed as if the whole city was empty. We looked into each other's eyes as we cackled. She always complained about her eyes but I always found them entrancing. They had a power over me I couldn't describe, like a drug.