CANCELED. CANCELED. CANCELED.
"Looks bad," I said, scanning the flight departures screens.
"Who would have thought O'Hare would have such problems with snow?" sighed Madison.
Madison and I were returning from a press tour, visiting trade reporters and industry analysts. She worked in corporate communications, while I was product manager for this launch. After a week on the road, airports and hotels had grown as tedious as the PowerPoint we repeatedly pitched. But a snowstorm blanketing the Midwest looked ready to ground the last flight for home.
I fished my mobile phone from my pocket, and dialed corporate travel. When the agent answered, I said, "My colleague and I are trying to fly home, but the snow may strand us in O'Hare. Can you reserve us two hotel rooms, just in case?"
Madison sighed and slumped onto a vinyl bench. Already other travelers were staking out territory for the long night ahead. O'Hare is always busy on Friday afternoons, and the canceled flights were turning it into a refugee camp.
"How'd we do?" asked Madison a few minutes later, as I hung up.
"Some good news and some bad news," I answered.
"Good news first," she said hopefully. "I need some good news."
"Somebody must have just canceled their reservation. The Hilton on the airport property has a room."
"A room?" she asked dubiously. "Only one room?"
"That's the bad news," I confirmed. "Everything else in the area is booked. Lots of stranded people."
She looked into the middle distance, taking in the news. Despite this new stress, she still exuded a self-contained calm, a quality I'd grown to admire during the crazy week. Her clear eyes, above high cheekbones, gave strength to her naturally pretty face. And though I always treated her with the professional respect she earned and deserved, I couldn't help but secretly notice her taut body, with confident breasts and a hint of hips.
I chased such thoughts from my mind, and offered a proposal. "Let's walk over right now. Maybe they can give us a suite, or at least a room with two beds. Otherwise, I'll sleep on the floor. Anything would be better than the terminal."
"Well, no point staying here," she agreed, scanning the departure screens one last time. "Let's go."
After a long hike through the huddled masses yearning to fly home, we arrived at the Hilton front desk. The clerk found our reservation (miracle!), but could offer nothing but rooms with a single king-sized bed. I looked at Madison and she looked back at me, shrugging with her eyebrows. Soon we were checked in and heading upstairs with our luggage.
Our working relationship had always been business-like but friendly, and we'd traveled together for the past five days and four nights. Still, entering a hotel room together created a sudden awkwardness, particularly with a large bed looming before us.
"I don't usually come to hotel rooms with strange men," she said, with mock solemnity.
"I'm not that strange," I protested.
"Stranger than most," she countered. "Anyone nattering about our products for days on end probably has serious psychological issues."
I laughed aloud and the awkward moment passed. "I'm starving. Let's eat."
"First let me change," she said, opening her bag and retrieving some casual clothes. While she disappeared into the bathroom, I called home about the delay.
"I know, I miss you too," I told my wife. "I hope we can get home tomorrow. At least travel found us some rooms." A white lie, to match the snow falling outside the window. I hung up as Madison came out of the bathroom, in a loose blouse open at the neck and slacks that showed her curves nicely.
As I took a turn changing in the bathroom, I noticed I'd grown hard in my shorts. I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered what had got into me. I could hear Madison talking on the phone, but not the words. Then she knocked at the door. "Ready?"
"Just a moment," I said, pulling on my jeans.
After a round of drinks at the bar, a table opened for us in the hotel restaurant. We ordered our meals, and Madison chose a decent bottle of red from the wine list. "The least the company can do, to make our unscheduled stop a little more festive."
We'd dined together every night that week, but always with an editor or analyst, so mostly we'd talked shop. By ourselves tonight, by unspoken agreement, we talked about anything but work. We compared notes on books and movies; her praise for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle was enthusiastic, but unconvincing, while we shared an appreciation for Jackie Chan. She talked about her quirky family, centered on the stormy relationship between her parents. I talked about my wife, and how, after so many anniversaries, we still sometimes wonder who is this person I've married.
The dishes and empty wine bottle were cleared away. Instead of more wine, I switched to cognac, while she ordered calvados.
"Get the tiramisu," she instructed. "That way I can eat from your plate, and the calories won't count." I informed the waiter, who smiled and said, "With two forks."
When the drinks arrived, I asked her why calvados. She explained she'd been an exchange student in Normandy. "I stayed with a family in an old stone house near Saint- Malo. The rest of France grows grapes, but Normandy grows apples. So I developed a taste for calvados. I also developed a taste for their son, Roger."
"Sounds very romantic," I said, smiling.
"I suppose," she admitted sheepishly, "particularly to a college sophomore. And a bottle of calvados helped me decide to give Roger my virginity, one evening when his parents were out. Not that he fully appreciated the gift. Despite the reputation French men cultivate as magnificent lovers, teenage boys are speedy the world over. Tres rapide!"
I laughed and lifted my glass. "To Roger, wherever he may be. That he's mastered his hair trigger."
"I'll drink to that," chuckled Madison. As she set down her glass, she asked, "How about you?"
"Oh, much more control than Roger, I'm sure."
"That's not what I meant. How did you lose your virginity?"
"Also during college, but in a dorm room, not a French villa. And tequila, not calvados. Her name was Meg, and we were so into each other. I was done in moments, but Meg was undeterred. She coaxed me back to life, and let me try again."
"Ah, yes, teenage boys," smirked Madison. "Rapid fire, but loaded with multiple rounds."
We shared dessert and finished our drinks, then signed the bill to our room. She stopped briefly in the lobby shop for a magazine, then we headed upstairs. In our room, I opened the closet to get a pillow and blanket from the top shelf.
Madison saw what I was doing. "You know," she said. "It's stupid for you to sleep on the floor. This bed is huge. We can each have a side, no problem."
"Are you sure?" I asked. "No concerns for your virtue?"
She snorted. "I told you, I left my virtue in Normandy."
Gathering her nightclothes and toiletry kit from her bag, she headed into the bathroom. I replaced the pillow and blanket, and changed into the t-shirt and shorts that serve as my pajamas. I sat down and flipped through some papers from my briefcase, waiting for my turn in the bathroom.
I was startled when Madison emerged. She'd let down her hair and taken out her contacts, and her clear eyes looked at me through black-rimmed librarian glasses. Her nighty came down to mid-thigh, and though not sexy lingerie, the thin flowered cotton hung over her breasts in a way that made clear she'd removed her bra.
"I didn't pack a robe," she said, a little shyly. "I didn't expect to have a roommate."
I retired to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, but had trouble peeing, I'd grown so hard. I managed somehow, then tried to arrange myself in my gym shorts to conceal my unbusiness-like reaction to the situation.
Madison was sitting on an easy chair when I returned, her head on one of its arms, her legs dangling over the other. She was sipping something amber from a glass, and flipping through her new magazine.
"More calvados?" I asked.
She shook her head. "Not in the mini-bar. Just brandy. See if there's something you'd like."
I poured myself a scotch and sat in the other chair. She showed me the cover of her magazine: Cosmopolitan. She handed it me and said, "Quiz time."
I opened the magazine to the page indicated, and read, "What Kind of Sexy Are You?" I laughed out loud, but asked her the multiple-choice questions, covering what kind of date she preferred, what movie stars she identified with, what sort of guy attracted her. In the end, she was "Fun-Loving Sexy... You're the quintessential natural-yet-naughty chick. You feel sexier on a fun day date than dressing to the nines to go out for a superchic evening."
"Your turn," said Madison, grabbing back the magazine. I protested that I couldn't figure out what sort of bra I should be, or which male fantasy I most wanted to fulfill, but we did our best and discovered I was "Siren Sexy... You emanate sex appeal with just a bat of your eyelashes or shake of your booty. And when it comes to being fun, fearless and frisky, you wrote the XXX book."
