Chapter 3: The Arrival
All the other windows on the second floor are dark as a walk to the landing. I make it to the landing of the stairwell before I stop. Someone is pulling into the parking lot. Their headlines are sweeping into the parking lot, which is still light with the orange of dusk. It's a van. I pause at the landing to lean on the rail while they pull in, long enough to see the female in the front passenger seat. It's a black woman, youngish looking, early twenties. The guy with her is black, too. He's got sunglasses.
I can't stand at the landing, watching them. It's too obvious.
I descend the steps, with what I hope looks like the weary plod of any other guest. The van’s side door slides open with a thunk just as my foot reaches the sidewalk below. I angle toward my car three rows over but my eyes track them. They're not watching me. The driver is wearing khakis and a polo. He's got a lanyard dangling from his neck, and he's talking to the young woman from the passenger seat. She’s nodding, gesturing toward the hotel entrance.
Three younger guys, big-shouldered and moving with a relaxed, athletic grace, pile out the back.
They’re in matching grey sweats and hoodies, some college logo faded on the chest. One of them yawns, stretching his arms wide enough to make his t-shirt ride up. The other two start hefting two large equipment bags from the van’s dark belly. The driver and the woman are walking inside, to the hotel entrance, the chipped wooden door swinging shut behind them.
The quiet is sudden inside my car, where I watch as the athletes--I assume they're athletes, now--finishing making a little pile of bags outside the van and stand there, waiting. I don’t start the engine, and I keep my feet off the brake, which would illuminate the brake lights. I sit in the dark, watching them and the single lit window on the second floor, my heart racing.
Of course, there's a good chance that they'll walk in a different direction, to a room off the path, and see nothing.
But maybe not.
From down here, the window is just a yellow rectangle of ceiling and part of the upper wall. Occasionally the wall flickers blue with the light of the television. I can’t see her. But I know she’s there. The image is burned into me: the lamplight on her skin, the swell of her bare ass spine, the way she closed herself off after my knock.
Even from down here, it's obvious to anyone in the parking lot that someone is in the room and the window is open.
The driver and the young woman emerge from the hotel’s main door a moment later, the yellow lobby light spilling around them. He returns to the van and holds up a single keycard, its plastic rectangle catching the sickly neon, and one of the guys snatches it out of his hands. The driver--a coach, I assume?--is done with his coaching duties at that point. He immediately peels off, heading for a room at the corner of the first floor, near the stairwell I just descended. The woman lingers, talking to the athlete who now holds the key.
His friend follows coach with a couple of bags to the corner room, two bags in hand. That leaves a trio, two tall men and the petite woman, standing by a small pile of bags, standing by the van. She is pointing, looking over their shoulders, at the walkway above them, in the general direction of my wife's window.
One guy stands to listen. He's holding the room key.
The other has had enough listening.
He sighs. He loops the straps of three remaining bags over each shoulder, and one across his chest.
He turns toward the concrete staircase. Each footfall is a soft thud on the asphalt.
My heart is hammering. I can feel the little tremors in my body as he progresses up the steps.
The guy is so overburdened with luggage that every step is a thunderclap up the stairs and down the walkway. I can hear each one from inside the car. Well, I can sort of hear them. I can more feel them, than hear them, the thud of them, as he tromps down the walkway, the straps pulling and clanging as he waddles impressively under the weight towards their room at the other end.
When he passes our window, he slows, and then stops.
I can't read his his expression, but he does a double-take as he looks inside--he looks away, as any decent human being knows they're supposed to do, but then he looks again, as he realizes he isn't immediately in trouble for seeing what he saw.
Cathy is letting him look.
There's no way she didn't hear him coming. Either she's smiling and waving (unlikely), or she's pretending not to notice.
Now he's lingering.
Behind him, his friend is coming up the stairs. The woman he was talking with has disappeared into the room below. The guy with the luggage hears his friend coming up the stairs and turns to look; they make eye contact. The guy with the luggage grins. I can see the smile from down in the parking lot. His friend seems him standing there, outside my wife's open window, and he slows as he approaches and looks inside. The two of them stand there, looking in.
All I can see is the two of them, standing outside her open window as the blue lights of the TV flicker.
How much time passes? My heart races. Probably it isn't even a minute. Or maybe it is two minutes. Their heads turn a couple of times, like they're talking to each other, and glancing around, maybe to see if they're being watched. They don't see me in the car below.
Then the one pushes the other; the guy with the bags tromps away. They're both laughing as they disappear around the corner to their room.
My pulse doesn't return to normal after they're gone. I wonder what they saw, exactly--if she was closed off or splayed out, or in some other position. I'm not hard with an erection, but if I unzip my jeans I could get there pretty quick. But I'm not thinking about jerking off. I'm thinking about slipping out of the car and back up the stairs, back up to the window, to see what position she's in, to see what they saw.
I don't sneak up.
The third guy is climbing the stairs.
He's on his phone.
He's not talking. Maybe he's listening to his messages or something. I can only speculate. What I do know is that when he walks by our window, he stops and puts his phone away.
He watches, by himself, for awhile. He stands there, looking in, still as a statue.
Then he walks away.
For awhile, that's it. I wonder what the conversation is like, as the three of them compare notes in their hotel room, unpacking their bags. I think some more about stealing up to the walkway, which is empty now. I stick my hand inside my jeans and give my dick a squeeze. It's a little slick. The blue lights of the TV are still flickering.
My phone is in my pocket.
She hasn't called.
She isn't ready for me to come back yet.