Our annual North America company conference was in Saint Louis, with one night's pre-planned function at the City Museum. For those who are unfamiliar with it, it is not your typical museum. Constructed largely from scrap materials, it houses slides (including one HUGE one), games and bars.
I traveled with my long-time coworker, Karen. We'd known each other for close to fifteen years at this point, having done a fair bit of traveling for work both separately and together. Karen was in her mid-forties, only a few months older than myself. Great, shapely figure and shoulder-length, dark brown hair to match the deep pools of brown in her eyes which sometimes reflected little tints of bronze or gold.
We met at the local airport near our respective home towns and flew out together, getting the pre-arranged shuttle from the airport to our downtown hotel. We always preferred to be allocated rooms next door to one another, but on this occasion, Karen received a room in the "new building" across the street, while mine was a ridiculous number of floors up in the starting-to-get-seedy main building. In such a situation, I would walk Karen to her room at night and also go over to accompany her in the mornings. She always appreciated this and I often thought there must be some backstory to this preference, but never actually asked her about it.
At the end of the first full day, we had a formal dinner with all our business unit colleagues in one of the convention center dining rooms. Mediocre food which the company likely paid far too much for, not to mention utterly appalling wine. A dull evening, on the whole, after which Karen and I went out to one of the local bars for a couple drinks, where she seemed perfectly happy to hang with me, rather than join any of the larger groups we knew. Around ten-thirty or so, we called it a night and walked back to the hotel, where I escorted Karen to her room in the annex and briefly stepped inside for a nice goodnight hug (we prefer to do it INSIDE in case anyone else sees and starts unjustified rumors - we'd both had our share of those, over the years).
Next day was another long day of talks and meetings, followed by 'a fun evening at the City Museum', where chartered buses took us a handful of blocks to the City Museum, where we turned out to be some of the first to arrive and therefore the first to hit one of the upstairs bars! Suspecting some of our colleagues may want to do shots later, we selected vodka with cranberry juice as the drink for the evening. An additional vodka shot would not even be noticed on top of a half dozen or so earlier vodka and fruit drinks!
We walked around the various floors of the building, checking out the amusements and refilling our drinks every half hour or so. Karen was eager to try the massive slide (I don't car for heights so much), so I held her purse at the bottom while she proceeded up the spiral staircase. Knowing I had a strong appreciation for her bottom, she even offered to walk up the stairs directly in front of me, in an attempt to encourage me to try the slide. But no - not even that was alluring enough to overcome my irrational fears.
By the time Karen came back down the slide, we were both sweating profusely. I know - women generally don't sweat, they perspire. Well, let me tell you, Karen was sweating. So was I, as the six-story "room" was unbearably hot on that summer's night. I returned her purse to her and she made use of the (relative) quiet of that area to make a brief phone call to a family member, before we left to go downstairs to grab a refreshing ice cream.
On the way down the wide staircase, Karen stopped suddenly and asked me to check her butt. I was in disbelief at what she had just asked me to do, before she explained she wanted to know if the slide had left any marks on her jeans. Well, I certainly took my time, carefully looking over a very nicely-filled pair of jeans from the rear. I could see no faults - all was perfect in my eyes. I'm still not sure if she was serious about it, or just teasing me.
We obtained our ice cream bars, then retreated to a quieter, cooler area to sit and consume them, before (reluctantly on my part) seeking out our larger group of colleagues at one of the upstairs piano bars. There was a raucous crowd there and sure enough, I was invited to partake in a couple shots, while Karen was asked to dance (and declined).
We spent probably an hour and a half or so with the group, having to yell until hoarse to be heard. Not exactly my idea of fun, but I couldn't convince Karen we could just leave really early - people would notice and talk.
At one point, she was standing with her back to the bar when another woman, carrying one too many beers in plastic cups, managed to lose her footing and tripped slightly, spraying Karen's lower legs with about half the beer. Karen was so not amused, while the tipsy lady just blew it off and returned for a replacement beer.
Closing time rolled around and we were shepherded downstairs and outside to the waiting charter buses. Karen sat by the window (she's usually more of an aisle person) and made as if to tell me something, then thought twice about it and indicated she'd tell me back in her room. Fine by me, as I was always happy to maximize my time alone with her!
Back at the hotel, I walked her up to her room in the annex and once more, she thanked me for doing so (she does this EVERY time) and reminded me I had no idea how much she appreciated this. Once the door clicked behind us, we moved into the sitting area of her suite, where we both wished we had something more to drink there (we didn't) and I asked her what she'd been considering telling me on the bus.
At this point, she hummed and hawed a bit, not really saying very much of import. I was a bit puzzled by this, so I prompted her: perhaps she wanted to take off her beer-sodden jeans and let them start drying out for the trip home next day? Alas, no - she had apparently decided they were just fine and were already drying nicely on her. Hey, a man can dream, right?
With nothing other than small talk remaining and another long day next day, we stood to say goodnight. While I would have been perfectly happy with a goodnight hug on the love seat, sometimes that can be a bit awkward with respect to hand placement. Not that Karen would likely have minded too much, as she seemed to be a pleasantly-buzzed, but slightly pensive, mood.
