I was naïve enough to believe that after such a tiring night full of so much stress and torture, my destiny would be merciful enough to allow me to have some rest. If I couldn’t beat the longest sleep record Lara had set the previous night, I hoped at least to doze off a little while I was still in the car and then zonk out in our hotel room. I felt smashed—my entire body was bruised, the skin on my wrists was raw from the rope, and my nose was full of clotted blood. It tickled terribly, which was even more unpleasant than my pain.

Sadly, things didn’t work out the way I hoped. After giving me a good impression with her driving debut, Lara somehow grew too big for her boots, revving the engine on every turn as if she were a seasoned Grand Prix pilot who wanted to show everybody she could finish the race before even starting it. The unfortunate result was that I kept jumping left and right in the backseat of the car, and my nose started bleeding again. Not only couldn’t I grab any sleep, but the elevator in the hotel also wouldn’t come to the lobby, and we had to take the stairs all the way to the fifth floor, which literally made my body disassemble.

In general, my hope to have a good rest was becoming a dream itself, and I suspected that something very unpleasant would eventually prevent me from grabbing any sleep. It was already a few minutes after midnight when we finally conquered the fifth floor, and there wasn’t anything in the world I wanted more than dropping dead on the bed. Unfortunately, when we approached our room, we heard our TV working inside, and I realized my fears had come true. Actually, the device wasn’t just working; it was booming louder than the Niagara Falls, and I was sure we hadn’t left it like that. We could also hear a suspicious noise inside, even louder than the TV program.

When she realized someone was rummaging through our stuff, Lara promptly stabbed me in the back, suggesting I should check out the situation. I looked at her, reluctant to do it. After everything that night, it was the last thing I needed, and I wanted to go to the slum under the overpass instead, find a vacant cardboard box, and spend the night there. In any case, it would have been a far more fulfilling experience than following my dumb assistant throughout the city and fighting with criminals.

Nevertheless, since we kept standing in the corridor while the man inside kept making an inventory of our personal belongings, which felt increasingly ridiculous, I eventually had to agree to take some action. I forced myself to push the lock, taking the risk of having my nose broken for a second time that day.

To my great surprise, the door was locked. It immediately solved the problem with my reluctance to go in, but when Lara took a hair clip out of her pocket and started recklessly prodding the lock, it came into focus again. The rummaging noise inside stopped right away. Since the situation was too weird and I knew none of us had bothered to lock the door when we left, I suddenly asked myself whether we were too stupid to try the wrong room. At first, I decided we might be, so I checked the room number, but we weren’t that stupid, as it turned out. Ultimately, I just stepped back and kicked open the door, making everyone in the hallway rush inside one after another—the door, the lock, the hair clip, and Lara. After all of them, I solemnly and proudly stepped in.

Unfortunately, or perhaps to my luck, until the moment we entered the place, the mysterious burglar was already gone. The door to the balcony was wide open now, and the guy had obviously followed our example from earlier that night when we climbed down the fire escape. In exchange for his absence from the room, he left us the mess he created inside.

I looked at our scattered stuff, exhausted, and just mumbled, “That’s it! I’m off to bed now!” Then I dropped there.

Lara stared at me, surprised, then grunted, “Well, it’s only midnight. Why are you so tired anyway? It’s not as if you did that much this evening.”

I gave her a caustic look and let her remark hang in the air without answering. Instead, I tried to bury my head in the pillow, but it was sticky and reeked of Johnnie Walker, so I frowned, annoyed. I didn’t know why the terrible smell followed me wherever I went, but it did, and it was disgusting.

I grabbed the pillow and angrily hurled it across the room, and for a second, I thought that if I could hurl Lara far enough from me in just the same way, it would be the happiest moment in my life. Unfortunately, I couldn’t. Soon, my assistant jumped on the bed next to me, put her feet on the other pillow, and started clipping and filing her toenails only a couple of inches from my left ear. It was a good thing that she at least washed her feet before taking care of her damn pedicure!

I listened for a while to the awful sound she was making, and in the end, I rose to my elbows, looking at her sourly. Then I grabbed her butt and pushed it toward the edge of the mattress. I wanted her to stop the filing. She did everything to resist and clutched at the bed sheets, whose end I had pressed beneath my body. After a short but silent fight, we both rolled down onto the floor along with the sheets and the pillows.

Lara started laughing, and she didn’t stop for a whole minute even though I almost fingered her vagina because she had ditched her pants on the bathroom tiles, and such a thing as panties simply didn’t exist in her wardrobe lately. Despite the erotic incident, I didn’t feel anything when I grabbed her crotch. My experience so far had convinced me we weren’t meant for each other.

I got up, frustrated, and shot my next disaffected look at her. Then I grabbed my pillow and turned around, putting it by the rubber plant in the corner to make the place my own bed. It was even more challenging to fall asleep there. I had completely forgotten that my assistant had turned the pot into her mobile toilet the previous night, and after a day of soaking in her pee, the soil smelled awful now.

Eventually, I had to get up again. I angrily pushed the pot into the bathroom, closed the door, and lay back on the floor. At some point, I managed to doze off for a while with the nuisance in the bed, throwing bits of nails at me and giggling. It was all for a very brief moment, though.

When she finally filed her toenails to the bone, the blonde-haired monster suddenly decided she wanted to watch TV and turned on the TV set so loudly that, at first, I thought there was an earthquake. On top of it, she switched it to a news channel, broadcasting live Congress debates.

Once again, a hundred and twenty decibels from the world’s most potent TV set shook the hotel and brought half of the ceiling plaster into my mouth. I turned around to lie on my stomach, but then my neck started itching, so I had to give up sleeping altogether.

Feeling desperate, I decided to take a bath. I went to the bathroom, pushed the pot outside, filled the bathtub, waited until the temperature was perfect, and hopped inside, splashing a ton of water over Lara’s pants on the floor. Then I leaned back and tried to relax, but without much hope that I would be left alone for too long.

After a few minutes, my wandering mind made me think about the mysterious ransacker in our room. I wondered who that was. It wasn’t Larry or Bob for sure because they didn’t have enough time to come here before we did, and besides, they didn’t know where to go. Plus, they wouldn’t run away so infamously after hearing just a few clicks in the lock.

Then I remembered the Asian guy—the owner of Eternity—but soon I decided it was unlikely to be him since I couldn’t imagine what the man could possibly want from me. By the way, my argument didn’t mean much because I couldn’t imagine what so many other people could want from me, too, and yet they had wanted various things during the past week. Anyway, if the Asian had really been our guy, his thugs would have probably killed us already, so I ruled him out eventually.

Obviously, the albinos were my third guess. When I thought about them, I shivered unpleasantly. These jerks were real crackpots! They had acted too weirdly in the club, but something told me it couldn’t be them either. Thick-skinned as they were, they probably wouldn’t bother to run away in such a situation. They would rather stay and take whatever they wanted, even if I watched them from my bathtub, shouting at them angrily.

Eventually, I rejected all the possibilities and gave up wondering because my speculations wouldn’t take me anywhere without any reasonable clues. I relaxed in the bathtub for about fifteen more minutes, and after almost drowning when I dozed off, I had to get out and accept that this night wasn’t my night for sleeping.

Outside, Lara met me, filing her nails again and picking at her nose between the sessions. On the TV screen, the Congress debates had disappeared, and some slutty-looking female announcer was wrapping it all up at the moment. I was almost sure nobody had the slightest idea what she was actually talking about because she had tucked her enormously big breasts in a blouse smaller than a child’s mitten and pretended that half of them weren’t hanging outside. Just looking at her was enough to drag a raja yogi with hundreds of years of practice out of his self-induced coma, and it was an excellent example of why you shouldn’t mix sex and news outside of sex news—because nobody would listen!

I quickly pulled my eyes away from the screen because I was almost naked and it was dangerous, and instead, I put my pants on. Lara looked at me, saying she was cold too—in fact, her exact words were, “My cunt’s freezing!” and she went to take her pants from the bathroom. Seconds later, she returned with her dripping garment and called me “a hopeless idiot.” I passed over the insult and slipped out of the room, heading straight for the elevator to try calling it to the fifth floor. If I couldn’t get any sleep in my room, I hoped, at least, to grab a drink in the lobby before they closed the hotel bar.

Surprisingly, the machine worked now, and when it clumsily came to me, the bellhop was inside—relatively fresh and ready to serve me. He opened his eyes, reeling just a little bit. I loudly informed him I was going to the lobby, and the guy’s trembling finger pushed the button thrice after looking for it for almost a whole minute. Soon, the elevator slowed down, stopping with the typical jerk, and the door opened slowly.

The junkie momentarily collapsed onto the floor by my side. Clearly, this was as far as his strength went, and the sudden jolt was, to him, like a ladybug being hit by a freight train. Since I had no desire to give him first aid and was sure he would be alright, I just stepped outside, where Sandra met me at the reception desk. She was smiling ironically.

I looked at her, ashamed. She wore a long evening dress with sparkling sequins. The garment was black, and her “letters” didn’t seem so small now because of its deep cut. Since I felt uneasy meeting her eyes—partly because of our ruined date and partly because I looked like a rugby player coming home after a rough night out—I simply fixed my gaze on her boobs, which meant I was heading for problems again.

“Did you sleep well, sweetheart?” She got me started right away.

“Like a baby!” I said and smiled because I didn’t know how to apologize for my unfortunate mistake.

“Have you fallen off the bed while sleeping?” the receptionist wanted to know, examining me from head to toe.

“Oh, no! It was a stupid accident after I woke up. I’m all right, actually!” I tried to evade her questions and then added, embarrassed, “I shouldn’t have slept this morning. It was definitely not my intention when I lay on the bed for a couple seconds.”

“Don’t worry! I got what I wanted from you even though you were unaware. Only your brain was dysfunctional if you know what I mean.”

I knew what she meant, and I was sure she was kidding.

“Well, I really hope I was at least half as good as I usually am when fully awake!” I decided to play her game. I had the feeling I would screw up soon, though.

“I couldn’t know that, actually. Despite all my efforts, I didn’t get to see your full potential!” Sandra scored a few points and playfully winked at me.

I blushed uneasily and decided to be more careful from now on. I also thought a small bluff could help me get out of the stupid situation.

“You know what?” I started saying hesitantly. “I’d really love to buy you a drink to compensate for your troubles this morning, but I can see you’re at work now, so maybe—”

“Another compensation?” She interrupted me, raising her eyebrows, surprised and intrigued. “But wasn’t our failed meeting supposed to be compensation, too?”

“Yeah, I know that!” I faltered, remembering my lame hitting on her when Lara and I checked in. “We could make it two drinks then—one for each occasion. But since I can see you’re at work now—”

“All right!” she suddenly agreed.

“All right? But what about your work?”

“Work can always wait!”

“Right. But your boss—” I stuck to the role of being a pedant.

“I’m the boss!”

“You are? No way!”

“Yes, I am!”

“Look at you! I had no idea!” I shook my head, amazed, as if I had just realized the meaning of life, the universe, and everything else. “But your clients—”

“Do you actually want to compensate me or not?” Sandra snapped, annoyed. She had every right to be.

I had to shrug resignedly. I wasn’t ready for a date, but I had no option. Despite that, since I was heading for the bar anyway, I decided I could use her company after all. She stepped out from behind the reception desk and took me by my arm, after which we ceremoniously walked toward the pink neon sign above the glass door as if the place was a chapel and we were getting engaged there. After stepping into the bar, Sandra walked me toward the counter, where she let go of me to sit on one of the high stools. As she did it, the neck of her dress drooped a bit, letting me see her cute pink and slightly protruding nipples. They were just as I imagined them when I woke up at noon. Then she asked me, “What would you like to drink?”

“A glass of gin, maybe,” I said as I sat on the next stool, trying not to look at her boobs, where I actually looked quite fixated. At that moment, I had already completely forgotten that it was me who was supposed to buy these drinks.

Sandra snapped her fingers at the bartender, who almost broke his neck, hurrying towards us, which wasn’t surprising now that I knew who was the boss here. My lady ordered two glasses of Bombay, and the guy brought them around before she even finished her order, thoughtfully leaving the bottle nearby—right next to a bowl of oranges.

The hotel owner leaned forward a bit as she crossed her legs. While doing so, she showed me her boobs again, and I was pretty sure it was intentional this time.

“Do you want an olive inside?” she asked me afterward, nodding toward my drink.

“Oh, no, thanks!” I mooed rather inarticulately because I had just grabbed the slice of lemon from the glass rim and crammed it into my mouth like a hopeless redneck attending an evening cocktail party for the first time in his life.

“It’s damn good, you know!”

“What is? The olive?” I snorted.

“The show. He’s gonna throw from a couple of feet away. He won the NBA Best Shooter prize three years in a row!”

“He also plays basketball?” I was genuinely impressed.

“No, I mean the National Bartenders Association,” Sandra explained, snapping her fingers again and leaning backward.

I looked at her, surprised. Her gesture echoed sharply throughout the hall because the place was already empty and quiet, and then it reverberated a couple of times off the walls before gradually dying down.

Since I vaguely suspected what was about to happen, and I didn’t want any olives to spoil my drink, I hurriedly made a decisive gesture, refusing the “show.” It was too late, though. The bartender, who had obviously just waited for his boss’ permission, was dancing at the far end of the counter, standing on the toes of his right foot, his left leg stretched backward for balance, and his right arm raised above his head—ready to shoot.

Actually, a minor correction would be good here. When I looked at the bastard and saw him frozen in his shooting pose, there was, in fact, nothing in his hand. It was as empty and sad as the hand of a ballet dancer who had just dropped his female partner on the stage, and the olive was already flying toward us, almost breaking the sound barrier.

Before I even connected all the dots in my mind, the green kamikaze shortened the distance between us, reaching the peak of its trajectory, and then it dove sharply, heading straight for my drink without remorse. Seeing that there was nothing I could do to defend my property from the deadly bombardment, I instinctively put my hand over the glass rim. In a second, the olive hit the middle phalanx of my index finger and bounced off, rolling down on the floor.

Sandra shrugged disappointedly.

“Well, this was in the late Seventies, after all!” she explained while raising her drink and waiting for me to do the same.

I did it; we clinked glasses, and we drank. Then I quickly tried to change the subject, avoiding looking at the bartender because I felt intense waves of vibration traveling across the counter surface and suspected he was banging his head into it.

“You look stunning tonight. Your dress is just gorgeous!” I attempted a compliment afterward.

“Thank you,” Sandra replied tersely, clearly remembering the previous “compliments” I had paid her. “It somehow accentuates my breasts in a flattering way, so they wouldn’t look too small, would they?”

I withered because it seemed my unfortunate blunder would haunt me for the rest of my life.

“U-uh, look! About that—” I started hemming and huffing, embarrassed. “It was very stupid of me indeed, and I didn’t mean it like that. I’m really, really sorry! Generally, I’m such an attentive and polite person, and I don’t even know how it happened.”

And to be more convincing in my apology, I put my hand to my heart to demonstrate how respectful and polite I was when dealing with women. Unfortunately, though, judging by the place where I held my hand, my heart had obviously moved to the other side of my chest without warning me about it. I was embarrassed again, but since it was too late to switch hands, I only cursed myself for trying to visualize my fake feelings in the first place.

“Don’t worry! Someday, women will be able to get their breasts surgically augmented. It’ll be as trivial as a tooth extraction!” I unexpectedly heard someone’s voice. I looked around myself, surprised, and saw the bartender, who had come to put coasters beneath our glasses. Who knows why he thought he was part of our conversation.

Sandra sharply turned her head, glaring at him, which made him scram right away. At the same time, I felt a bit relieved after he interrupted us because it meant I wasn’t the only jerk around.

“Maybe they will!” The hotel owner sighed with hope when we were alone again. “By the way, commenting on my breasts isn’t the most horrible thing I’ve seen in my life. Other parts of my body have taken hits, too. Once, there was this guy who assured me my butt looked exactly like his fodder grinder. I think he was a farmer from Iowa, and he meant that as a compliment!”

This time, I prudently decided to remain silent. I just smiled as charmingly as I could, and in my mind, I swore not to drop the ball anymore. I needed to change my tactics urgently to fix everything between us, and to do that, I had to bring heavy artillery into the battle, making my date laugh.

“So, how’s the business going? Is it good?” I suddenly dropped my biggest bomb on her, which usually has an immediate and devastating effect. Literally, ninety-nine percent of the women jumped straight into bed with me as soon as they heard this!

“Did you actually ask me out to talk business? I thought you would compensate me!” Naturally, my date didn’t even realize she was under heavy bombardment.

“No, but—” I stuttered, confused again. “Iowa is half a country away. I wonder what a farmer from the Great Prairie would do here!”

Sandra shrugged. “All sorts of people come here. Across the street is Eternity, which is very popular. Many guys come to the place to party all night, and in the morning, they usually come to our hotel to recover. In fact, we rarely have long-stay guests like you. But enough about business! What about you? What do you do for a living?”

I suddenly looked at her, unsure. Her question caught me completely unprepared, and I didn’t even know why it had to be so. After all, it was only natural for her to ask such a thing on our first date.

I started thinking feverishly. My first impulse was to make an accountant out of myself, but then I remembered she was a hotel owner and probably quite familiar with the subject. At the same time, I didn’t know shit about accounting. My next option was to introduce myself as a rural guy—maybe an oil worker or a farmer from, let’s say, Evanston—but then the image of Sandra’s wooer from Iowa popped into my mind, and it immediately ruined the entire idea. I came up with a few other things, too, but they were never right, and since I wasted too much time, the situation became ridiculous at some point. Eventually, I panicked, and to avoid further damage, I had to go with whatever bullshit I found in my head.

“I’m an artist!” I surprisingly heard myself blurting.

“Really?” Sandra didn’t miss the opportunity I gave her so foolishly.

“No, it’s not what you think!” I promptly tried to retreat, but it was too late. My mouth was already on fire, free from my brain’s shackles, and I couldn’t stop it. “I don’t actually paint or make sculptures or anything. I’m more of a… well, I’m a… performer. I perform things!”

“But that’s really cool! What do you perform exactly?”

I looked at her, desperate.

“I perform… in the… circus. I perform with animals!” I was just an inch away from telling her I was a clown, but thankfully, I stopped myself at the last moment.

“No shit!” My date almost exploded. “Tell me all about it! What kind of animals do you work with?”

“Actually, all kinds. Mostly elephants, but all kinds. But it’s over now. I gave up!”

She made a sad face. “What happened?”

“Well, there was an accident,” I mumbled dejectedly and stopped, uncertain. “It was an accident with one of the elephants. But you know what? I really don’t wanna talk about it!”

After that, I theatrically looked away in an attempt to stop this torture by pretending to be consumed by my painful memories. At the same time, I was swearing wildly in my mind because I had made Murphy the Great out of myself again. This time, literally! I just couldn’t understand what was wrong with me when I met a beautiful woman. It was like I had a ticking bomb in my head instead of a brain, and I never knew when it would go off. Unfortunately, though, Sandra was far from ready to stop torturing me.

“What about your girlfriend, then?” She was quick to dig deeper into my “artistic” career. “Is she a performer, too?”

“Oh, no, she’s not. And she’s not my girlfriend!” I tried to salvage what I had left of my dignity and defend my bachelor status at the same time. There was really no point, though. I had already reduced my chances of being with this woman to zero. “She’s only my secretary.”

“How do you mean that? She’s like an impresario or what?”

“No, she’s like a very ordinary assistant. She simply arranges my schedule.”

“Hmm.” Sandra pursed her lips, unsure. “She didn’t strike me as an assistant when you two checked in. She behaved rather possessively toward you!”

“Yeah, she’s got this issue; she’s quite a… domineering assistant!” I blurted out the first crap that came to my mind without even caring anymore. This was definitely the lamest example of hitting on someone in the whole world, and if I ended up sleeping with this woman after all, it would have been only because she felt pity for me.

Since I had no other “brilliant” ideas about how to make my date laugh, and besides, no matter what I did, it would put me in the next embarrassing situation, I decided to give up struggling and try finding out something about Sonya instead. If Lara’s sister really hung out in Eternity often, maybe she had come here too. So I leaned my elbows on the counter to look more casual and asked, “Are you running the business here alone? No partner to help you out?”

Sandra looked at me cunningly as she smiled. “I’m single if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Of course, I’m not!” At first, I jumped up, worried that I fucked up again. Then I realized it wasn’t the right answer. “As a matter of fact, I am asking, but, you know… I’m just wondering… you know… if you, you know—”

Then I stopped talking and promptly started wondering what the hell I was wondering about. Naturally, I didn’t find the answer within a reasonable amount of time, and to suppress my panic, I tried to swallow. I wanted to do it as quietly as possible, but it came out like a massive amount of water violently spiraling down the drain after the sink had been unclogged. I had to cough really loudly to cover that up.

“I’m wondering how you handle all this alone!” I quickly went on afterward. “I mean the hotel management, the reception, all the supplies, and all the girls…”

“Girls? What girls?” Sandra looked at me, puzzled, clearly not understanding my point. And she was right not to. I couldn’t even understand myself!

“Well,” I explained uneasily while trying to introduce my stupid question about Lara’s sister, “you said your guests were partying wildly in Eternity. They surely have some fun with prostitutes over there, and they certainly come back here to consume… the deal, you know. I guess it’s a real mess when they do!”

“Our policy is that guests can do whatever they want in their rooms. It’s none of our business. But yeah, you’re right; it’s a mess sometimes. But why are you even asking this? Are you interested in such a girl? I assumed you were more interested in me!”

I swallowed dryly again because I felt the unstable soil under my feet, and I was afraid I would sink into the swamp soon. There was no turning back, though, so I recklessly rushed forward.

“I am, actually! I am interested, but sometimes, depending on the mood, people might want some off-road experience, if you know what I mean. Like something more spicy and even a bit illicit.”

Sandra looked at me strangely. It made me realize I sounded like a pervert who wanted to torture women before having sex with them, and I cursed myself again, wondering why I kept blowing my chances because of Lara’s sister. At the next moment, my date unexpectedly played along.

“Aren’t you too adventurous?” She asked me cunningly, smiling softly at me. “It’s always a good idea to taste the meal first and see how spicy and hot it is before ordering the entire dish. Or maybe try something less spicy and build on it!”

“You know, I like to take risks and usually have my meals as spicy as it gets!” I decided to overshoot myself, and I did it. In my attempt to look more relaxed, I even made a gesture with my hand, whose meaning remained an absolute mystery for both of us, and I nearly spilled the oranges out of the bowl. “With such a huge appetite as mine, there’s simply no other way!”

“Well, if you’re that big of a gourmand,” Sandra shrugged compliantly, “then you can definitely try Eternity. And you certainly can bring the food back here if you want!”

“You know what? I might do that!” I replied evasively, being careful not to look too eager. “I might do it sometime, and I’ll let you know if I need any recommendations.”

“Sure thing! In the meantime, you could also try our menu. Our Mexican food can be quite spicy, too.”

“Oh, I’m certain of it!” Her suggestion made me grin foolishly. I spontaneously fixed my gaze on her boobs again, and it was a horrendously stupid thing to do, but I just couldn’t help it. Suddenly, I had this weird feeling that I was back on track, which was good, but the problem was I had no idea what I had done to deserve that, and it worried me. “I definitely intend to taste the local food,” I continued the play, at the risk of spoiling everything. “In fact, I might even do it tonight if the kitchen still works.”

Sandra looked at me slyly.

“I think we could arrange something to that effect.” She licked her red lips and unexpectedly rubbed her thighs against each other as she sat on her stool. She did it somehow dreamily—with her eyes half shut and her lower lip slightly trembling—and I couldn’t help but think she was turned on. It was weird because I really hadn’t done anything to make her so wet for me.

Totally confused, I smiled awkwardly and secretly glanced down to check the situation with the weird rubbing thing. Sandra was still doing it—unwillingly as it seemed—and it made me wonder what a powerful influence I had on women. Was I really that good at making them fall for me after such a short, rather stupid conversation? Well, it would have been nice if I was, but it just didn’t feel right, and I knew it. It became too obvious just a moment later when the actual reason for Sandra’s squirming hit me harder than a freight train—she was peeing herself!

“Oh, fuck!” The hotel owner sharply leaped to her feet, looking down at her lap, terrified. Her dress was all wet. At first, I stared at it, too, but then I looked away because I was too embarrassed for her, and when I did, I promptly realized the reason for Sandra’s over-excitement about me. I noticed the bottle of gin, which the bartender had left for us, toppled upon the bowl of oranges, and from there, the booze was softly gurgling over the fruits, then trickling along the counter surface over to its edge and dripping quietly on Sandra’s stool. By the way, my elbow was too close to the crime scene, and it made me suspect that my overly emotional gesture when I illustrated my appetite for Mexican food half a minute ago might have had something to do with the accident.

“I’m gonna kill this son of a bitch!” The victim cried, inflamed, as she grabbed the hem of her open-leg dress, pulling it up and revealing her wet thighs before my eyes. She had no underwear on.

I hurriedly drew my elbow away from the bottle and looked around, frustrated. Luckily, the bartender was nowhere around because otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten away with my blunder so easily. To obscure my involvement in the gruesome act, I quickly took a paper napkin from the nearby holder and offered it to my companion.

From that moment on, our unfortunate date and all the surprising events afterward evolved almost breathtakingly fast. We had to give up our drinks immediately and go to Sandra’s apartment on the second floor to change her dress. As a true gentleman, I escorted her there and helped her with her zipper because zippers on women’s dresses are always located in awfully inconvenient places on their backs, and they always get stuck. Quite naturally, my lady’s zipper got stuck too, but it wasn’t that much of a problem because her dress was nothing but necklines, and as she was impatient and hot, she just pushed the shoulder straps aside, and the garment dropped on the floor at her feet, leaving her body naked.

After that, I literally had only a couple of seconds to react. I couldn’t even open my eyes wide enough to examine every little detail of Sandra’s anatomy when she jumped upon me like a hungry tigress on a deer duck. We rolled passionately around the floor, sweeping aside the coffee table, two footstools, and the inevitable rubber plant, which was clearly a required accessory for every room in this hotel. At some point, we became entangled in its foliage so tightly that we looked like Tarzan and Jane, practicing very dangerous and unprotected sex in the wild African rainforest.

To be honest, our first date surprised me, and it didn’t have much to do with how I imagined it in my dreams. Sandra behaved more like a black widow than a cute baby seal, and the entire time, I had the feeling she was a starving arachnid, hurrying to finish the act as soon as possible so she could put a napkin on her lap and have me for dinner! Eventually, we shattered everything into pieces in her room, and I tensed my body for one last time, snapping like a firecracker on Chinese New Year’s Eve while my partner burst into flames like a mercilessly bombarded Vietnam jungle.

And that was how this embarrassingly fast, recklessly dangerous, and totally devastating sex actually ended. I remembered almost nothing of it and didn’t even have enough time to take a breath before it was over. I barely managed to finish in time!

©2022 S.T. Fargo
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(www.stfargo.com)