Keith, over the past hour, had stared out the window so long, way down to the street below, that someone might’ve thought he was considering a jump. Still recalling his first night with Lesli, he surprised himself with a small laugh.
Ambushing him at the hotel and catching him completely off-guard, Lesli had flipped the proverbial script; entirely. Impatient with waiting for him to make a move, she’d stopped trusting her allure and threw herself at him. She’d shut the door, hotel room door behind them and, like an Eskimo, rubbed her whole face back and forth across his.
He couldn’t help but laugh. This chick is affectionate. Not all of them, he’d learned, are. Hugging, kissing — it can all be just for show, coming from an icy heart. This one, she felt genuine. “I am,” he said, “a dead man.”
As she stepped out of her heels, Lesli’s leering smile, practically wrist-to-wrist, shamed the Chesire Cat. “Yep,” she’d agreed, “that you are, fella.”
“Wait a second. Why you ain’t tell me you was coming?” He was happy, just wondering.
“I didn’t decide until the last minute.” She’d shrugged, looking a little sheepish. “Sorry.”
“Well, I’m glad you did. Otherwise, I ain’t think I’d see you ’til next week.”
“So you are?”
“What?”
She gave kind of a half-grimace. “Glad I just showed up? Out of nowhere? I don’t want you to think I’m pushy.”
He’d laughed again. “Oh, no. Coming here, popping up, barging your way into my room — nope, not pushy at all.” She giggled. “And stop frontin’, ’cause both of us know damn good and well I’m happy as a pig in slop to see you.”
“Well, that’s a romantic image.” After that, neither found much to say, a switch from their last get-together at her apartment, chatting, a couple of motor-mouths, from evening until early light. He’d fixed drinks, whiskey-rocks, minding himself to, if she stayed a few days, have her favorite, rum-and-coke, on hand.
“I have to get back by Tuesday morning,” she‘d let him know while perched at the foot of the bed in stocking feet, the nylons giving her long legs a sculpted look, particularly those wondrously tapered, ice-cream-cone thighs. Lesli shifted, ruffling her hair, skirt rising.
Keith had to chuckle to himself. She loves skimpy hemlines. Who can blame her? If you got it, why hide it? But, for crying out loud, baby’s body, on top of impossibly good looks, spelled sheer gorgeousity. More than mortal man can stand. And she dug him. Dug him tough. Maybe he ought to pinch himself.
Handing her a drink, he’d stretched out on the bed, placing his glass on the nightstand. Before he could draw his arm back, head on pillow, talking trash, she was beside him, staring with, of all things, a look of wide-eyed innocence. In which he immediately was lost.
This woman was something else. He was thinking, definitely not taking any chances on things going like last time, when they ended up talking all night and not doing much of anything else. It wasn’t, he could tell perfectly well, desperation on her part. Nope, it was determination. She was going to have her some Keith or damned well know the reason why.
They never did finish their drinks.
Next week: Will Lesli still have her some Keith when she gets out of that shower?
Dwight Hobbes welcomes reader responses to P.O. Box 50357, Mpls., 55403.
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