Carissa caught the headwaiter’s eye, and he came over with quick efficient little steps. They whispered together a minute, then he took off. I was telling Carissa I couldn’t afford a room there when he came back and gave her a key on a brass ring.
“My treat,” she smiled at me. “Come on. Don’t say no. You’ll love it!”
She was right. The room was sumptuous. That’s the word for it. Though, that night I couldn’t have told you what it looked like. Carissa kept the lights low and the curtains closed. But we didn’t sleep until well after 2 a.m. There was only one bed, a big king sized square with about ten pillows on it. The mattress was cushiony and the comforter was heavy like a good quilt ought to be.
I didn’t think anything about the one bed. It’s just like old times, I figured. When we were girls and spent the night at each other’s house, we slept together then in our long flannel pajamas, huddled together against the hard wind blowing across the plains and through the window jamb. “Our thin blankets barely kept us from freezing,” I reminded Carissa. She giggled and huddled up against me like she used to back then.
I closed my eyes when she wrapped her arms around me. She noticed how cold I’d gotten after taking off my clothes, and she rubbed her hands on my arms and legs to warm me up. I shivered more from her touch than from being cold. There was no thick flannel fabric between us that night; just the lacy pink of her bra and panties and the worn cotton of my white ones. Carissa kept rubbing and hugging me, passing her hand from my shoulders down to my ankles. My nipples were already hard and pushed almost painfully against the padding of my bra when she accidentally brushed against one. I winced. She touched it again, gently. She cupped my breast in her hand then rubbed her thumb across my erect nipple. I gasped. The sensation was peculiar, numbed somehow by the padding but sharp too at the same time. Carissa moved over to the other breast and repeated the same motions. And again I gasped.
My senses were alarmed and confused. My body had never felt those sensations before. Not even that time when I was 17, and I’d lain in the hay barn with Bobby John McGee, and he’d pulled down my panties and shoved his thing at me and then squirted all over my legs. It had been exciting at first, but nothing like this. I felt conflicted. And I didn’t dare open my eyes. At the same time, I wanted to say stop and prayed she wouldn’t. I wanted her to try another place but was terrified that she would.
After a while, Carissa began rubbing up and down my body again. I wasn’t at all cold anymore. I was warm, getting hotter by the second, and breathing deep and hard. I lay rigid on the bed while she moved up and down me. I caught my breath every time she passed over my breasts. And I lost myself when she began running her fingers along my inner thighs. I realized then that I had been holding my legs tightly together. And my panties felt wet and hot. I was so embarrassed!
Carissa wasn’t deterred by my stiffness. She was patient, like when she’d taught me to ride my rainbow bike with the banana seat. She kissed the wet spot on my panties when she discovered it. My eyes shot open wide. Carissa came up to me then, rubbing her body along mine on her way up. Before she kissed me, she held my face in her hands and looked at me for a long time, like she wanted to be sure I was paying attention. Was I ever! That’s why I remember every single thing about that night. How she touched me and kissed me and sucked me and rubbed me and pressed me and held me.
I moaned when I came, a sound so foreign to me I don’t know where it came from. It was my first time, you know, to have an orgasm. No one ever made me feel so good before Carissa. I mean; that thing with Bobby John was just roughhousing practically. I wasn’t even worried about getting pregnant. I knew he was way off the mark that time. And I never let him near me again. Those other boys weren’t much better. Too excitable, I guess. But when Carissa was sucking on me, that pressure just there, like when you close your legs together real tight only better, like a million times better, just so, in the right place, for the right amount of time, and it’s a little warm and wet there too. Well, I just opened my mouth and out came this groan from deep in my gut. It’d been waiting there for twenty odd years and it was about time it got out.
I wanted to thank Carissa afterward, but I was afraid to open my mouth, lest some other new part of me found its voice too. I didn’t dare try to reciprocate either, if you know what I mean. What did I know about those things? Even now, I only know what she’s taught me. Well that night, we slept late and got up just in time to dress and check out without having to pay for another night’s stay. I found my car with a parking ticket, went home to change clothes, and sped into work as quickly as I could. I don’t know what I felt most guilty about, the night I’d spent with Carissa or getting to work so late.
We’re regulars at the St. Regis now, Carissa and me; a little indulgence I look forward to more than anything these days. We have a standing date every two weeks. I still can’t really believe it. Me, a regular at the St. Regis Hotel. Now it doesn’t matter if I get there before Carissa. There is always a table and a room for us. We have dinner and drinks in the restaurant, and each other for dessert in our room. We take turns paying the bill and leaving the tips.
I bring an overnight bag with a change of clothes now. No frantic drive home in the morning for me anymore. Instead, I enjoy a hot bubble bath in one of the big garden tubs. Carissa is usually gone by then. Her clothes are back at her office, a little trick she learned a long time ago. She says it comes in handy more often than you’d expect. She gets back to her office early to shower and dress before any of the partners get there. I’m lucky if I make it to work by noon, but my excited hustle during the few days before more than makes up for my half-day absence. My boss said that to me the other day, with this sleazy grin on his face. I think he was hoping I’d confide in him what I was up to. The receptionist and the mailroom guy think I’ve got a boyfriend. They ask me about “him” all the time.
I just smile at them and think to myself, “Oh, Carissa.”