Carried Away Read online

  It was early evening wherever we were, whenever it was. I didn’t know what time we had left Hong Kong, so it could have been anywhere. I was still too preoccupied at that time with how amazing everything was to wonder about such unimportant details. I saw Gretchen drive up in a Jeep, interesting choice, so I wrapped back up in my towel, took Henry by the hand and led him to the door. He humored me and didn’t pull his hand away. I didn’t want to let go of him when he got in the Jeep, so I climbed into his seat with him.

  I probably should have helped Gretchen with the bags (all two of them), but this airstrip was smaller, older than the one we left. Its gravelly tarmac did hurt my bare feet. The sun hung low but still bright. Gretchen gave him a pair of sunglasses, and pulled her own big aviators down from her head. I guess that was appropriate since she flew the plane. The sun hit my fish-belly complexion hard enough that I knew I should hide from it. I crouched down into the foot well as we left.

  It wasn’t a long drive before there wasn’t much of a road. That’s part of why I think it was an island. I had never seen the ocean before, so I thought all beaches were just like that one: white sand, blue water, palm trees. The little house sat on a pier-and-beam foundation that raised most of it four or five feet above the sand. Its deck wrapped all the way around it as if it were built on a pier, and it did have a pier extending just past the breakers, but that was much closer to the level of the sand and water.

  The house’s layout was bright and spacious, everything overlooking the furnished deck. The deck was only partially covered, but with the sun setting opposite the ocean, the house’s shadow stretched fully across it. That was good. It looked nice, and I didn’t have any sunscreen, at least not until Gretchen took me into the master bedroom and showed me my things. “Here we are, Love.”

  I hadn’t had any things whatsoever for a few days, so I was delighted! There was a big cosmetics bag on the low dresser filled with every type of lotion, soap, shampoo and makeup ever invented, and I only knew what about half of the little tools and things in it were for. “Your kit isn’t in yet, but I picked you up a few things,” she apologized. “We’ll have you sorted in a few days.”

  She had picked me up quite a few things. There were a variety of sandals, flip-flops and deck shoes, and more than a dozen lovely sarongs of various colors and designs. I had several pairs of sunglasses. The collection of hats was my favorite part. Gretchen and I both had fair skin, and she took good care of me. Without thinking, I threw my arms around her and hugged her, pressing our breasts together uncomfortably hard.

  She laughed musically. “Oh, go on, Love. It isn’t much, but it might get you down to the beach now and again.” All told, it was about as much clothing as I had ever owned at once, not that that was a high bar. She walked off to the guest room.

  I couldn’t wait to change. Or maybe “dress” would be a better word since I only had the towel. On the other hand, I wasn’t wearing much more when I finished. All of the bathing suits were string bikinis, probably because that made sizing easy. I’ve never cared for those so I left them alone. They just seem so arbitrary, not much coverage over being naked and not really designed to look better than what they’re covering. I started to tie one of the sarongs around me and behind my neck, but then I reconsidered. The new me dressed for lust, not modesty. After some experimentation, I had it loose and jaunty around my hips, tied at the top of a leg to cover one thigh, and to bare the other in front.

  There were a couple of spools of silk ribbon in my jewelry. I pulled the red one (the sarong I chose was mostly orange and yellow with red accents) entirely off its spool. With it, I tied my hair behind my neck, then wrapped the ribbon around it in opposing spirals. The ribbon was long enough to go all the way down past my hips and to tie off in an ornamental bow. From there, my hair hung loose behind my calves. I liked it. I picked some sandals and a shell necklace, and inspected myself in the mirror. Coco Chanel would have been disappointed in me, but I decided to keep the necklace. I wasn’t wearing earrings or bracelets or anything, and without it I thought I just looked half dressed. The necklace said, “Because I am beautiful, and I like sharing with you.”

  When I walked out to join Henry and Gretchen on the deck, they both smiled.

  Henry had changed into loose, linen trousers and a safari shirt. Gretchen, as if she had gotten the memo, wore a white sarong (tied just like mine!) over a gray one-piece with clasp closures on either side of its high neck. She had set out three canvas lounge chairs next to each other on the deck, and the two of them were, well, lounging.

  I sat in the third and listened to them talk, mostly about business, how things had gone in Hong Kong, people and things I didn’t know about. Gretchen had taken down her ponytail, letting her curly red hair fall on the canvas as it would, and they were both lying in the shade, gazing up at the clear, blue sky.

  I found I had twisted onto my side to face them while I listened. Maybe I wasn’t listening so much as enjoying the scene. That was the life I wanted: overlooking a tropical beach, discussing debonair doings. It was a postcard moment. She definitely had the life I wanted. I didn’t envy her; I admired her. Just as I was thinking that, she laughed like a songbird. Everything about her was a dream made real, as if life were a catalog, and that was the page I had been staring at for years.

  The moment felt eternal, its silence measured out by rhythmic static that could as easily have been the waves, the tides, or the passing summers of a lingering childhood. Then Gretchen got up and folded back the deck panels covering the hot tub. Of course there was a hot tub. The catalog had a little asterisk and said “hot tub not pictured.” She twiddled a recessed control panel and the tub’s surface began to froth. Then she stood up and walked into the house. When she came out, she held a small tray with three big, fruity umbrella-drinks on it. “Drinks by the pool, Darling?” she asked.

  Without moving, he answered, “Delightful.” I was ‘Love’ and he was ‘Darling’. I wanted to try the hot tub, so I sat up and unbuttoned his shirt, running my hands up and down his chest. He smiled again, lazily stretched his arms and folded them behind his head. He looked so peaceful! I kissed his chest and stood up. Before going to the tub, I kissed him again for good measure. Then once more just to be sure.

  OK, four, and one on the cheek, but that was all.

  I sat with Gretchen on the deck and tested the hot water with my toes. After her, I untied my sarong and slid into the tub, leaving my cord of hair laid out along the deck. Once I was in, I noticed I had left my top (the necklace) on, so I removed it too. Henry came over in the trunks he had worn under his soft, linen pants and slid between us. Gretchen handed him his daiquiri and took a sip from hers. I had never had a daiquiri; I hadn’t had more than an occasional taste of any alcohol. I’d calculated a few rules of thumb for how not to get soused, but I’m fundamentally a cheap date.

  I liked the daiquiri. There, in the shade, in the water, I adjusted my mental tally from “one sip” to “whatever.” I hoped I wouldn’t make a fool of myself later, but in that continuous hot water massage, I couldn’t find it in me to care.

  Henry needed the massage more than I did. The jets helped wash away that tension he had brought all the way from Hong Kong. He slid down until only his face was out of the water. Gretchen put her hands up under his neck and held him, floating, in front of her. She was slowly rubbing the back of his neck, so I slid over next to her and laid my hands on hers to learn. She used a lot of pressure in a gentle pattern, rolling in and out like the surf. I liked the way she did it, and I tried it myself, moving down to his shoulders, cracking his rock-hard muscles to let the water melt them away.

  I stood over him for a while, then I had to come up under him with my face under Gretchen’s arm to work slowly down along his spine. I worked out to one hand, then to the other. Gretchen pulled him up and laid his head on her shoulder, working on his back with one hand and feeding him daiquiri with the other. I caught her exchanging glasses, slowly draining bo
th his and hers. That seemed sly, then odd. She had mixed the drinks, after all.

  After finishing with his calves, I visited my drink again and exercised just enough good judgment to abandon it into Gretchen’s rotation. I worked up his quadriceps and hamstrings. I felt so comfortable, relaxed, and mischievous that I playfully pulled off his trunks and continued to his buttocks. That yielded the convenient side effect that I wasn’t the only one with no clothes on. Well, I guess that wasn’t true. I had the ribbon in my hair. Before I could decide whether to start from the top again or do something more mischievous, he pulled himself back up, sitting next to Gretchen with his arm around her. I moved into his lap opposite her.

  I didn’t know if they were lovers, but the way she touched him, she obviously cared about him a great deal. She loved him, but I was the one in his lap. I reached underwater and grabbed her knees, pulling them toward me. She squealed as she sank, and he pulled her to him to hold her out of the water, bringing her onto his lap opposite me. Our legs annealed together into a comfortable position. We each had an arm around his neck, and I could reach up into her hair, which was still down. I pulled her head down toward his shoulder as I lowered my own. When I started kissing his face and neck, she did the same. His head fell back into our arms. I moved her free hand onto his chest and mine down to his scrotum. I really had drunk my share of the daiquiri, and none of us had eaten since we left Hong Kong.

  It took some fiddling, but I managed to get the clasp on the far side of her neck undone, then I pulled her hips in closer to his crotch with my free hand, turning her toward him and giving way to her. By the time I had slid out his leg and brought her directly in front of him, they were kissing passionately and she floated slowly up and down, rubbing herself against his increasingly erect penis. I came up behind her, pushing her into him, and finding her suit’s remaining clasp. Her shoulders felt tense too, as I worked down her back, pulling the one-piece lower as I went. When I got down to her waist, her legs hung limp, floating freely under the water. I knew the feeling. He had her complete attention. I pulled the suit down around her soft, round hips, down her legs, and away.

  Her figure was even more amazing to my hands than it had been to my eyes. I slid them around her gentle curves while they kissed, embracing her everywhere. I reached up between her legs to his genitals. He was fully aroused, and my wrists ground back and forth against her labia. She tried to spread her legs farther, but she couldn’t think enough to lift one up over his leg. Maybe I could help her.

  Her body rose out of the water before I had time. Hands under her arms, he threw her up onto the deck on her side with her legs still hanging down into the water. He quickly lifted one of her knees onto the deck while pinning her other knee in the opposite direction with his own. She opened like a book. One hand tucking her knee and one pronating her hips, he pushed the tender, inside of her thigh into the rough, wooden deck. Her torso fully twisted, she raised one bent arm to cover her eyes and reached out toward him with the other, falling short of everything but the arm with which he held her hips. The position looked awkward under water. Two of their legs hung into the water, knees falling short of the shelf on which we had sat. Henry supported his weight with the hand on her hip and his opposite leg twisted and bent to get a foot on the shelf. I, however, found the position quite convenient, as I was able to get a very close look at the tip of his penis grinding around on her vagina like water circling a drain.

  After several tries, groping blindly with my arms reaching around his legs, I found enough of her flesh to grab hold and position myself. Her soft, melodic moans turned into a squeal when I found her clitoris with my tongue. The squeal became a scream, and I felt testicles hit my cheek. He moved inside her, grinding himself to her and her to him, and her body trembled, the sounds of her voice driven some by that motion, some by my tongue, mostly by the rhythm of her deep, gasping breaths. He must have liked my contribution because he continued there until she finished. With firm, hot currents of the tub coursing around my skin and his scrotum pressed hard into my cheek, I felt the spasms of his ejaculation and shivered, imagining what Gretchen must have felt.

  When he finally pulled her back to the water, she slipped herself under, rinsing her face and head, then rubbing the chlorinated water from her eyes when she surfaced. I guided us back into his lap while she did so, but somewhere along the way I caught the slightest glimpse of her bloodshot, weeping eyes. It seemed she loved him a great deal more than he loved her.

  We sat there quietly for a long time, watching the stars pop out from under their big, blue blanket.

  A day in transit, an umbrella drink and a hot tub make a body tired, hungry and thirsty. Henry announced he would make dinner, then slipped on his shirt and trousers. On his way inside, he stopped to grab rolled towels off a rack near the door and lob them at Gretchen, who was wriggling back into her bathing suit. She laughed and cowered in front of them, letting them hit her instead of sailing past into the water. She missed one, but I caught it, half-diving back in from where I sat on the water’s edge.

  As soon as Gretchen followed him inside, she came right back out with a playful smile, a tall glass of iced water in each hand, and Henry’s hands on her shoulders, leading her to sit at the round patio table under the house’s broad overhang. His hands hovered over her shoulders for a moment after he set her down, as if to catch her if she tried to stand up, then he went back inside.

  A reflection of Gretchen’s Cheshire grin flashed in the house’s huge windows as her eyes followed him to the kitchen. Judging her timing, she slipped out of her chair and scampered around the side of the house, along the decking that extended under its eaves. I had finished patting my hair dry when she returned with matches and a basket full of heavy-wicked citronella candles. She and I in our sarongs, her bathing suit, my necklace, made it to our seats at about the same time and both drank deeply from our water glasses. We were lit roughly equally from one side by lights in the house’s open kitchen, across the living room from us and on the other side by tall and eager candle flames. There might have been insect noises in the twilight, but the surf’s pulsing static washed them away.

  Reluctantly breaking into the quiet evening, I asked Gretchen how long she had known Henry.

  “Oh, forever, Love, as long as I can remember.” She laughed.

  I took a sip of water to excuse my silence, and she set her glass down and silently sighed.

  “Father worked at his firm. He and Mother died in a car crash when I was fourteen.”

  I was speechless, feeling guilty to have left my own parents who were still alive.

  She continued, “I’d have gone to an orphanage if he hadn’t found out and taken me in until I could be emancipated. He treated me like a daughter, but can you imagine it?” she asked, leaving an empty pause where she should have called me Love. “Coming of age in the palace of the prince who slew your dragon and swept you away from hopelessness and fear?

  “I was old enough when it happened that I saw him through a woman’s eyes, not a girl’s. I just wasn’t old enough to know what to do about it.” Eyes lowered, she took a deep breath before continuing. “I would have done anything for him. I wanted with all my heart to take care of him the way he had saved me. He made me finish high school. He made me make friends. He made me go to prom like all the other girls. He thought I was growing up to be independent, but it wasn’t true. I did it all just for him. I loved him. I wanted him to be my first. I begged him.”

  She sniffed and wiped one of her closed eyes with a finger. “He refused, said I had to ‘discover my own sexuality’ or some such.” She fell silent for a moment, then continued, “Yumi told me…” It felt strange watching my new hero, the jet pilot, struggle to find words. “She said…” Gretchen trailed off again. She looked up at me nervously and asked, “What was it like?”

  “I,” I started, but couldn’t find any words either. “I don’t know what to say. I have nothing to compare.”

  Vi
sibly ashamed to have asked me a question she knew I couldn’t answer, she tried to lighten the tone. “Trust me, Love, I’ve had plenty, and none of it compares.” Her thermonuclear smile looked sheepish in the dim light. “Around the time he was making me start university, he met someone. He loved her dearly, and they engaged to marry. I knew well enough to be a good girl around her. I didn’t want her to get jealous of me and take him away from me forever. He was all I had.”

  She said, “He was...,” then hesitated, drawing a deep breath. She continued, “That would have been OK. I suppose we’re all lovesick some way or another at that age anyhow. I was fine until I overheard her talking on the phone with one of her friends. She bragged to her friend about bagging a rich husband and teased about how much better she would come out in the divorce than her friend had. She talked about someone else and how she only had to keep him hidden for a year or so. She talked about Henry, my savior, in ways that turned my stomach and set my heart on fire. I didn’t know what to do. If I confronted her, she would make destroying me her top priority. If I told him, he would think I was a jealous liar, but I couldn’t let her do it to him. I wouldn’t. No, truthfully, I couldn’t.”

  Her brow furrowed and her breath quickened with the memory of pain. “I had no choice but to tell him even though I knew it was suicide. I was right. He was angry. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard him raise his voice. I had already packed a bag to leave, not that I had anywhere to go, but he stopped me, made me stay. He said he forgave me and made me promise to stay until I could move into a dormitory for the next term. It could have been worse, but not much. I felt like an orphan again.

  “The next night, late, while I was hiding under my bedspread, crying for everything I had lost again, I heard the front door slam. I didn’t hear anything after that, and I got scared, I snuck out of my room and started looking around the flat. I found him sitting with his back against the inside of the front door and his face in his hands, crying. I knew he had confronted her somehow. Seeing him like that, I was devastated. I wished I hadn’t said anything, that it hadn’t been true, that I had been in the car with my parents, anything but to see him like that. I went to him and held him the way he had held me in my grief years before. That night, he was only a mortal man, and I was a woman.