by Rob Grant
I began to suspect something was horribly wrong as soon as I reached the hotel door: it opened with a single swipe of the keycard. I stood there for a few moments, a little dazed, examining the card and the lock. I even contemplated closing the door and trying the card again, just in case it had opened accidentally, or the door hadn't been properly shut in the first place, but I decided not to push my luck. I stepped inside, and braced myself for the worst.
The suite was fine. More than fine: it had actually been cleaned in very recent history, and it smelled, well, nice. There were fresh flowers in a vase on the table, and a welcome basket with fresh fruit in it. I peeked cautiously inside the TV cabinet. Bizarrely, there was a TV in there. I flicked it on and hunted through the channels. The reception was superb. Some of the programmes were even in English. Underneath the TV, there was a refrigerated minibar. With a barely credible flourish of luxury, there were actually drinks inside it.
I popped out a malt whisky -- my nerves needed steadying -- and found, to my horror, the ice tray contained cubes of ice. Really. Ice that was actually frozen. I dropped three into the worryingly clean glass and sucked a generous draught, steeling myself for the bedroom.
Cautiously, I pushed open the bedroom door and sneaked a quick peek around it. It looked like there was actually a bed in there. I craned around the door again. Yes. Indeed a bed. A big bed, too, with clean linen on it.
I took another slug and strolled over to the lounge window. There was a breathtaking view of the city. I scanned the whole area, and could not see a single construction site.
Whatever was wrong with the room -- and something surely had to be wrong with the room -- it wasn't immediately obvious to the naked eye. Perhaps it was located directly over some all-night thrash garage rave party venue. Perhaps the river flooded it regularly at high tide. Perhaps it was directly on an air-force flight path, and fighter jets would come screaming through the bedroom window, break the sound barrier over the bed, then carom out through the bathroom all night long.
I went back to the entrance and checked the number on my keycard holder against the numbers on the door again. They still matched.
I took off my jacket and gingerly opened the cupboard by the front door. Surely it wouldn't be a functional wardrobe. Surely there wouldn't be clothes hangers in there. In fact, wouldn't there be a body in the cupboard, at least one, all nice and stabbed and ready to slump into my unsuspecting arms, so I could inadvertently clasp the dagger that was buried in its back, just in time for the homicide detective who was doubtless lurking outside to burst in and catch me in flagrante?
I braced myself and tugged.
But no. No bodies at all. Nary a one. And coat hangers aplenty. There was even a generous bathrobe that looked like it might actually accommodate my entire body comfortably. Worst of all, and you'd better sit down for this one, people: there, at the bottom of the wardrobe, was a suitcase.
My suitcase.
My long-lost suitcase. With my long-lost clothes in it.
With trembling hands, I lifted it up, carried it to the bedroom, and set it on the bed.
The locks had been removed, naturally, by some customs officer with all the artful skill and grace of one of the clumsier lower primates, but my clothes were there. Almost all of them. A pair of shoes, too. My shoes, that fit me. Leather shoes. With the soles attached. And there were socks. Clean socks. I don't want to talk about what was left of the socks I was standing up in. That's Stephen King country.
By now, my nerves were set completely on edge. I drained the whisky and headed for the bathroom. As my hand reached down for the handle, I froze. I could hear running water. I put my ear to the door. Yes. The shower was running. And somebody was humming, very softly.
I stepped my senses down from Def Com Three. That's what was wrong with the room: it was double booked. All was right with the world again.
The shower stopped. I strolled over to the minibar and took out another whisky miniature. I settled back into the unfeasibly comfortable armchair and waited.
I didn't have to wait long. The bathroom door opened and a woman stepped through.
I say 'woman', but that hardly does justice to the apotheosis of femininity that padded into my room wearing only a man's shirt -- completely unbuttoned, mind -- and a pair of ghostly underpants that redefined the word 'skimpy'. You could have had a long philosophical debate about whether or not they actually existed at all. They seemed to be hovering in some barely visible reality, halfway between this world and the next.
Now, a man reaches a certain age, and pretty much all women start to look beautiful. Whether that's because your standards get lower, or because the scales actually do fall from your eyes is a moot point. But this woman was a heart-stopper by any measure. You could have employed her in an abattoir as a humane method of stunning animals before slaughter, and, trust me, they'd have died happy. You could have stood this woman in a queue at a bank, then robbed the vaults, picked all the tellers' pockets and staged an impromptu performance of Wagner's Ring Trilogy without even the closed-circuit cameras noticing you.
She had long copper hair that cascaded over the right side of her face like a waterfall of molten bronze and danced on her shoulder in laughing ringlets of pure silk. The shirt -- my shirt! -- fell teasingly open, to show just enough of the gentle swell of the underside of a perfect breast to make me want to run away immediately and join the Foreign Legion. I wanted to measure that breast. I wanted to weigh it. I wanted to paint a face on it and make it my new best friend. I wanted it with me everywhere. I wanted us to grow old together, me and that breast. And then I wanted it to be buried with me. It was perfection, pure and simple.
And yet, compared to her stomach, it was nothing. Now, it's been a goodly while since I had anything remotely resembling a six-pack of my own and a tightly packed female stomach has long been an object of insane desirability for me, but this belly was ludicrously beautiful. Tight skin stretched over racks of abdominal muscles so firm, you could have taken a thimble and played them like a washboard in a skiffle band. Sammy Davis Junior could have tap danced on that stomach. You could have fitted wheels to her back and used her as a skateboard.
Not that I looked too hard, you understand. As soon as I realised I was staring, I looked away immediately. How long my gaze had lingered was anybody's guess. It could have been a matter of seconds, or it could have been hours or even days, for all I knew.
Certainly, it had been long enough for drool to dry in the corner of my mouth. I took a thick slug of whisky to wash it away.
She spoke. Yes, she could speak, too. What a gal. 'I hope you don't mind my using your shower.'
Ye gods. She used a gerund. If there's anything in God's good heaven more erotic than a beautiful woman who can parse a sentence correctly, then whisk me up there, angelic host; take me now. Myself, I didn't reckon I'd be quite capable of speech, just for a year or so. I gave her a cool smile and the tiniest shake of my head. I was trying to remember which was my better side, so I could somehow point myself towards her at my least unattractive angle. Don't misunderstand me, I had no illusions that this... this vision, this Helen, this Venus would entertain for a nanosecond the remotest prospect of anything mildly resembling a kind of romantic entanglement with a piece of flabby filth like myself, but I was keen, schoolboy keen, to have her think as well of me as possible.
She smiled with a set of teeth that really belonged under bullet-proof glass right in the centre of the Louvre, with their own set of lights permanently trained on them. 'You're terribly sweet. I wonder if I could beg another favour of you?'
Could she beg a favour of me? Seriously? I would have sawn my mother's arms off without anaesthetic and mailed them to her first class if she'd asked for a back scratcher.
She turned her back to me and hitched up her shirt -- my shirt! Did it look that good on me? -- so that the rear of her ephemeral thong was in full view, guarded either side by hummocks of flesh so completely round and taut that just the tiniest a
mount of dedicated buffing would have turned them into perfect pink crystal balls. I would have gladly signed away my own soul, and the soul of everybody I'd ever met to Mephistopheles himself, just to be able to squeeze them together for fifteen seconds. From now on, that's all I would ever want in life.
My head was thrumming. She looked over her shoulder and with a little flick of her hair, she said: 'My thong seems to have got caught up my bottom. I wonder if you could... ease it out for me?'
Well, it would have been ungentlemanly of me to refuse, don't you think? The poor girl was obviously in discomfort. She'd turned her head back to face the wall, and was standing on her tiptoes, shifting her weight from side to side. I grunted, not a grunt of acquiescence, you understand, just an involuntary animal grunt, drawn up from the depths of my oldest ancestral memories.
The problem was, I wasn't sure if I could stand up. I had a swelling in my trousers you could use to roll pizza dough. I took a final swirl of whisky and started to edge myself out of the chair. I put my glass down where I thought the table was. It thudded to the ground and rolled under the minibar. I stood, as best I could, and slouched slowly over to her. I had to slouch, so my penis didn't reach her an hour or two before the rest of me. I really was dizzy. I ran my finger around my shirt collar, partly to release the heat that had built up inside there, and partly to check the digit was still working correctly, and wouldn't fail me in what would surely be its finest hour.
When I was just an arm's length away from those perfect orbs, reaching out slowly, oh so slowly, for the thin strip of ghostly material buried in that divine canyon of pert flesh, she turned her head again suddenly, so a curled whip of copper flails fell over her cheek. Her sweet breath caressed my face as she said, in a throaty groan so thick and liquid, it might have been made out of maple syrup: 'With your tongue, big boy.'
I think I must have grunted again. Certainly, there was some sound from somewhere around my throat that might have come from a hibernating bear. My entire body seemed to be engorged with blood. Thick, sticky blood, too. It was no longer running through my veins; it just sat there, pulsing wetly, thudding in my temples, in long, globular queues, unable to pass through the melted lump that used to be my brain.
Alarm bells should have been going off, but I couldn't hear them. Frankly, I'd have ignored them anyway. If there was a price to pay for this, so what? I lowered myself slowly to my knees, not only to stretch the moment and savour the anticipation, but I was half afraid if I went down too quickly, I'd get the bends and faint dead away on the brink of this, my greatest sexual triumph.
I was eye to eye, now, with the twin moons, and close enough to feel their heat flowing over my cheeks. I swallowed as best I could, then reached out my tongue and hooked it under the vee at the nape of her wraithy thong. My eyes glutted themselves on the curve of the silken band that dug into the flesh of her waist and disappeared over the top of her sculpted hip bone. I dragged my tongue down slowly, excavating the flimsy material from its heavenly channel, unable to differentiate between the smoothness of the silk and the satin softness of her supple skin.
And down I went.
And down.
And round.
And just as the scent of her was intoxicating what was left of my mind, just before my train pulled in at Paradise Central, she gave a little shimmy and stepped to one side, so the thong snapped back into place, leaving me on my knees with my tongue hanging out and drool dribbling down my chin like the miserable, wretched dog I truly was.
'Thanks for that. You're awfully sweet.'
You know, the human tongue must be made of erectile material. Certainly, mine seemed massively engorged, and I couldn't quite work out how it was supposed to fit back in my mouth. Strange, there'd always seemed to be room for it in there before. I tried to say that the lady was welcome, but I'm guessing I sounded like Charles Laughton after the whipping in Hunchback. I really found myself hoping her name wasn't Esmeralda.
'Mind if I fix myself a drink?'
I shook my head, mumbled something like 'Esthbuthe be' and without looking back, staggered into the bathroom as quick as I could, trying not to look like a gut shot cowboy, but doubtless coming up short.
I shut the door behind me, and tried to remember how to breathe. In and out, wasn't it? Or was it out and out? Or in and in? I finally worked out something close to the correct combination, sucked and blew a few big ones, then ran a sink full of cold water and dunked my head in.
I stayed under a long time. Long enough for my brain to stop glowing like a plutonium fuel rod in a drained coolant tank. When I was finally happy I no longer constituted a major nuclear threat to the city of Paris and its environs, I emerged and stuffed my face into a thick, fluffy and, yes, warm towel.
What was that woman doing here?
She was here, wasn't she? This wasn't one of my crueller, more tormentory erotic dreams was it?
I clicked open the bathroom door and peeked. She was there all right, bent over the minibar in a primally provocative L shape, her long, straight legs doing their long, straight magic thing. I clicked the door closed.
OK.
She had to be real. I wasn't this good at dreaming.
There were several possibilities that ran through my fevered mind, none of which seemed good. She could have been a hooker -- a very high-class hooker, granted -- who'd somehow got the wrong room. That would have been disappointing, but not the end of the world, so long as she didn't discover her mistake and try to correct it anytime soon. She might be some kind of undercover assassin who liked to toy with her victims before offing them. Again, not great, but I could live with that, even if only for a short while. Let's face it, there are many, many worse ways to go, and I've almost tried them all. She was a crazed, man-hating serial killer who'd escaped from some kind of high-security mental institution, and was about to dismember me bloodily and brutally with the hotel fire axe. Likewise, fine with me, so long as I got to squeeze her buttock cheeks really firmly while she was swinging away with her chopper. Or, and this, to my shame, seemed the most likely and desirable alternative of all: she was a plant, sent by Johnny Appleseed himself, no less, to divert me while he wreaked more of his mayhem. Possibly while he even sneaked up behind me and did away with me himself. If so, good plan, Mr Appleseed. Excellent plan. I'll bet it works.
I freshened up with the entire contents of the astonishingly well stocked bathroom cabinet and, smelling like a perfume fight in a whorehouse, went into the lounge to discover my fate.
She was curled on the sofa, sipping at a highball. I checked as discreetly as possible, but I couldn't see a fire axe anywhere within her reach.
I decided to drag up the armchair and sit opposite her. The view was better.
She smiled and ran her finger round the rim of the highball glass. 'Well, Mr Salt, how do you like your room?'
Mr Salt, eh? Well, that narrowed things down. It definitely eliminated the mistaken identity option, and cast serious doubts on the psychopathic escapee alternative. So: undercover assassin or honey trap?
'I like the room plenty. I'm practically in love with the room, truth be told. I'm seriously considering buying the hotel just so I can be in this room whenever I want. I hope, one day, to retire to this room and serve out my dotage in it. That's how much I like the room.'
'So that would be...' She raised her buttocks and reached under. What was coming up? The old ice pick? A serrated hunting knife? No. She produced a clipboard. 'A plus?' She raised her eyebrows and shot me right between the eyes with that Louvre smile.
'A plus?'
'You'd rate the room "A plus"?'
'Certainly, I'd rate the room "A plus". I'd rate the room "A double plus", lady. "A triple plus", if that's an option. How many plusses are we legally allowed, here?'
She made a tick. Somehow, she made it erotically. 'And the...' lick of the lips '... facilities?'
'The facilities? Are you included in the facilities?'
That smile again
. "Fraid not, sirrah.'
'Then that's just a straight triple A. Were you included, we'd have to put our heads together and come up with an entire new classification scale, you and I, because they haven't yet created enough As to come close to conveying that rating.'
'Oh -- I borrowed your shirt.'
'Really? I'd hardly noticed.'
'I hope you don't mind?'
'Mind? No. The shirt needed it. It's having the time of its life. However, if you'd care to return it once you're through, I would like to spend the rest of eternity pressing it to my face.'
'Cleanliness?'
'Isn't that next to Godliness? I've never been to either.'
'The cleanliness of the room?'
'Look, I'm happy with this hotel. I'm happy with this hotel like I'm seven years old and it's Christmas Day, and somebody gave me this hotel as a stocking filler. Why don't you just put down a whole bunch of As and plusses, then we can get this paperwork out of the way, and try and find an even more interesting way of whittling away at the afternoon.'
'Just one last question?'
'Shoot.'
'How do you rate your welcome?'
'My welcome? Is this the part that includes you?'
She nodded. 'That's my job: I'm guest liaison. I do the welcoming.'
This was a genuine questionnaire? I still thought we were flirting elaborately. 'You do it good. What can I say? You're a world-class liaiser. You welcome to Olympic standard and beyond.'
'Right. You don't think I'm... a little over the top?'
'Over the top?'
'Perhaps a little bit too... I don't know... flirtatious?'
'Flirtatious? What on earth can you be meaning?'
'Well, the whole getting naked and flashing my body and wearing your shirt and asking you to adjust my netherwear with your tongue kind of thing?'
'I enjoyed adjusting your netherwear with my tongue. And the shirt and the nakedness? I wouldn't call it flirtatious, no.'
'Well, let me tell you, Mr Salt. Some people do. Some people make complaints about it.'