The Arrangement

The following is the third part of a short story representing a letter sent by the author to an online friend with whom he has enjoyed a long relationship without any physical contact. He has always kept her informed of any offline recreational activities he enjoys and she has reciprocated in kind. This letter was written as a report of one such offline meeting of which she had taken part in the planning. She was aware of his previous "accidental connection" at an earlier conference and knew that the author was planning to meet his "conference paramour" at this event.

* * * * *

We left the elevator and went our separate ways, I to buy candles at the gift shop and she to prepare for the short drive into the city. It wasn't difficult to find four jasmine scented candles and take them back to the room and light them. I sat them in ashtrays and glasses from the bathroom and let them burn while I showered and cleaned up the room. I was to meet my online friend at 6:30 in the bar just off the lobby. Well, if my body would stand up to this, it would stand up to anything.

I sat down for a while to take stock of the day's events and what the evening promised. Was I out of my mind? There I was: 64 years old, having spent the entire afternoon in such a heated, animated sexual episode that even I didn't believe it, and waiting for the moment when another woman with promised sex on her mind would appear in the bar downstairs! I must have been absolutely out of my mind! There was no way in pluperfect Hell that I was going to be able to "perform" this evening. What had I been thinking? Christ! What a mess! I allowed my thought processes to run along this course for at least a half-hour and then noticed that the time was drawing near for me to appear in the bar for whatever might appear on the horizon.

Maybe…..maybe she'd be absolutely, horribly unattractive and I would have good reason to disappear when I saw her; maybe she'd take one good look at me and laugh her way out of the bar and the hotel lobby; maybe she'd have a drink with me and tell me she was simply not interested; maybe she'd be followed by her husband who would come into the bar and throw me across the table; maybe she'd send a message to the bartender for some old, bald guy in a blue blazer and gray flannel slacks, that she could not make it. Maybe.

Maybe not.

Maybe she'd come in and tell me she wanted to fuck my brains out right away; maybe she'd slip her hand under the table and stroke my cock through my pants; maybe she'd rub her tits along my arm as she sat next to me; maybe she'd lick her lips and whisper words like, "let me suck your cock," or "I want your cock in my pussy, now!" Maybe.

Maybe not.

I hauled myself out of the chair and out of my indecision, took another quick shower, brushed my teeth, re-dressed as I had promised her I'd be, and left the room for the elevator ride to my doom or my redemption, I did not know which it would be.

Arriving in the bar at about 6:10, I ordered a Beefeater & tonic and sat in a dark corner, facing the door so I could get a good look at whoever came in. I could always cut and run, right? She'd promised to wear a navy blue business suit and would be carrying a small, red overnight bag. I supposed that would be a definite identification.

I watched. I waited. A dozen or more men and women came in and went out the entrance to the hotel, directly across from the bar alcove. No blue business suits. No red overnight bags. Lots of very attractive women. None looking my way.

6:20 Nothing.

6:25 Nothing

6:30 Nothing

OK, you've figured it out. She never showed up! I sat there until 7:15, nursing several gin & tonics and munching on bar nuts, but no blue-business-suited-red-overnight-bag-carrying woman came in the door. I walked out into the lobby several times and looked around. I asked at the desk. Nothing. Nobody. I was out of luck.

Or was I?

Wasn't this actually the answer to my 'situation?' I did not have to worry at all about not being able to satisfy or be satisfied. I began to relax.

But then I stiffened and ordered another drink. What if I had missed her coming in and she'd seen me and decided to turn around and leave? What if she had been so disappointed in what she saw that she figured it was not worth the effort? Damn! That would really piss me off!

Finally, at about 7:20, I got up, paid my tab and left the bar. Well, here I was, in the outskirts of Philadelphia with nothing to do. The room was already paid for. I'd told my wife not to expect me before midnight (banquet and speaker and discussion sessions, of course). I'd be damned if I was going to go home at this hour!

I walked down the hall and slipped into the banquet room just as the after-dinner speaker was being introduced. I found the table where our group had been assigned and slipped into one of two unoccupied chairs, the one with a clean table setting still in evidence. The woman across the table from me leaned in and whispered, "Where have you been? Robin's been looking for you." Robin Watters is my direct supervisor, the Dean of Admissions at the college. Was I in trouble? Oh, shit, again! As I began to focus my attention on the speaker and at the same time tried to come up with a good reason for having missed the afternoon sessions and the dinner itself, Robin slid into the chair next to me. She leaned in and whispered into my ear, "As soon as he is finished, I need to talk to you. Can you come up to the hospitality suite on the mezzanine level?" I turned and assured her I would be there directly after the speech, and asked if there was something we could discuss here and now. She shushed me, touched my shoulder and sat back in her seat. I turned my attention to the speaker and realized I was starved. Four gin & tonics and nothing on my stomach since lunch (with quite a bit of physical activity during the afternoon) did not bode well for my physical condition. I could almost hear my stomach rumble.

Approximately fifteen minutes into a rather boring (any other kind?) speech, I felt Robin's hand on my arm, but since the hand did not seem to be urging me to turn, I did not; and sat still, waiting to see what she had in mind. The hand slowly moved down along the back of my upper arm and then onto my hip and then around to my thigh, where it gave me a little squeeze. What in the hell was going on here?

This was my boss! There was no mistaking her intent here. One does not squeeze an older man's thigh to indicate some sort of punctuation to the speaker's thoughts. She could only be hinting at something, and I had no idea exactly what it might be.

Let me do a quick backtrack here. Robin is approximately 36-37 years old, the Dean of Admissions at the college where I work, never married (that I knew of), one adopted daughter of about 8 years, and – get this – a former student of mine when I was a junior high school principal! What in the hell had I stumbled onto here?

Robin was tall. By tall, I mean approximately 6' 1" tall!! The usual: basketball, volleyball and track while in high school. Very athletic. Very coordinated. Very physical. Very Butch, some would have said; but quite attractive in the "handsome" sort of way large women are sometimes described. Dark red hair, long, below her shoulders; large, plain face with dark green eyes; shoulders that looked like they could wear a pair of men's football pads without wasting an inch; legs that went on from here to eternity; and no chest! Absolutely no chest! I would imagine her breast measurements were in the A cup range. If it had not been for the long, beautiful hair and the make-up, she could have passed for a man with her physique.

And she was touching my leg, squeezing it softly.

Jesus! What to do? What to do? My mind went in fifty different directions wondering exactly how I should or IF I should respond to this move. But, thank God, the moment passed without me having to make a decision. Her fingers traced a line along my thigh and retreated to her lap, I suppose. Nothing more occurred during the remainder of the speech. I sat there like the proverbial 'wooden Indian' for the rest of the presentation and when I finally did turn, found that Robin's seat was vacant. When had she left? I looked to the others at the table, but they were occupied with applauding or picking up their purses and things to leave for the after-dinner discussion sessions. I, too, stood and exited the banquet hall quickly through a side door. I went to the men's room to straighten my tie and splash some cold water on my face to rid myself of the heated flush in my cheeks. Frankly, I was agitated about what might be in store for me up at the hospitality suite.

Leaving the men's room, I looked around the lobby and noted that it was nearly deserted; everyone had proceeded to their assigned sessions and only hotel staff members and other guests not associated with our conference were in the lobby. I decided to take the long, curving staircase up to the mezzanine where the hospitality suite was located. One of the vendors at the conference usually sets up a suite with sodas, snacks, sandwiches, samples of the wares they are trying to peddle, and – of course – alcohol. None of the sessions or seminars would make alcohol available, of course, but in the hospitality suite there was everything from Champagne to beer (domestic and imported) for the conference-goers' pleasure. All in the name of business, I suppose.

Entering the suite, I noted that it had not been cleaned up since the before-dinner rush for free cocktails and had to search to find something decent to eat. I settled on a half-dozen crabmeat-stuffed mushroom caps and some rather delicious small triangular sandwiches of an indeterminate origin. I began to wash it down with a glass of still-cold Riesling and heard a sound off to my left.

On the left side of the suite's sitting room, there was a set of double doors that led into a beautiful bedroom. I had been here early this morning when there were bagels and cream cheese and coffee available during session intermissions, and had wandered in there to find several small tables with hors-d'œuvre trays on them, ready for the lunch rush. I marveled at the expense to which some businesses would go to sell a product. Didn't they know that if the product did as promised, it would sell itself? Ah, well.

I now moved toward those double doors and opened them quietly. Standing in the middle of the room, at the foot of the huge bed was Robin. She was holding an open bottle of Champagne and two glasses. She was in stocking feet, her shoes tossed to one side, and she was smiling right at me as she gestured for me to close the doors. I let the doors swing closed behind me as I felt my heart fall into my stomach with a thud.

"Thought you'd never get here," she slurred. Apparently, she'd already had a few drinks and was quite comfortable and relaxed with the feeling. "I have something I need to discuss with you, but first I want to toast a successful year. Our student retentions have increased some 30% since you came on staff, Ed; and I know it is almost totally due to your efforts at making them feel like our small college is the place for them to find whatever it is they are looking for."

I murmured my thanks and accepted the glass of Champagne she held out to me. We clinked glasses, toasted, and sipped at the golden bubbles. I watched her eyes. Were they greener than I had imagined? The last time I actually looked into them was when she was about 13 and just a big, gangly kid trying to fit in where she obviously did not.

At that time, I remembered, I had made an attempt to make her feel like she had something to offer and encouraged her to investigate more physical applications for her talents. She had, ultimately, become the quintessential female jock in high school, blowing away competition right and left, and earning all sorts of honors, awards and scholarships. I remembered when she had come back to the local area and accepted the Deanship at the local community college. Everyone had been quite surprised she had not gone on to bigger and better, but she had silenced all criticisms with her vow that she wanted to 'give back' to the community that had given so much to her. Good kid, I had thought at that time; now, I was not so sure what to think.

She stood right in front of me, actually towering over me by a good two inches (it would have been more, had she kept her heels on) and looking at me as if she was the queen and I was some lowly peasant caught robbing her vegetable garden. "Why do you think I asked you to come up here when I knew no one would be around?" she asked.

I told her that I supposed she had something to discuss with me that she did not want any of the other participants from our college to hear. I also let her know with the tone of my voice that I was not at all frightened by her aggressive physical display. I looked back at her with calm eyes – but an absolutely scared shitless heart.

She turned and walked across the room and leaned against the ornate dresser there. Locking her eyes on mine again, she asked, "Do you remember one time back in Junior High School when I was standing in front of your desk and you were asking me where I had been for the entire afternoon the day before?" I nodded a 'yes' with a small smile.

"Well, you never found out where I really was, did you? I told you I had cut the afternoon classes and had gone down to the Jungle (our environmental laboratory behind the school; approximately four acres of woods, a pond, etc., used for field study) with some friends and would not rat them out. You took my word for it and gave me detention after school, but didn't suspend me from the team. I thought that was pretty nice of you. I never thanked you."

I told her that I did that more often than not. I believed that giving a student several second chances allowed them more latitude to make better decisions in the long run. I attempted to continue with this line of talk, but she interrupted me with, "I want to tell you where I really was. I want to tell you now. And then I want to thank you for being a really nice guy when I needed it."

"I was in the jungle that afternoon, but I wasn't with a couple of friends; I was with a teacher. Mrs. Crawford and I used to go there a lot to sit and talk. She was really nice to me when not many others were. When I found out what she really wanted, I wasn't terribly surprised; and it was easy enough to be nice back to her. Do you understand?"

My smile told her I did, but I went on to let her know that I had known about Mrs. Crawford's 'arrangements' with some girls for special after-school 'tutoring' but was never really sure, deep-down sure, that those sessions were anything else but academic help. I stopped there and waited for her to fill in the blanks.

"She was gay, Ed; everybody knew that. Some girls called her a dyke; some called her queer; some made a lot of really nasty remarks about her; but I always thought she was something special because of the way she treated girls who didn't have all the popularity that some girls had. She was always especially nice to me."

"And your Jungle meetings, Robin? Were they more than just academic help?" I asked.

"Yeah; we had sex. Lots of times. I liked it. She liked it. Nobody got hurt. It didn't screw me up for life. Nobody ever found out about it. And even if they had, I would have beat the shit out of anybody who said anything, and they all knew it."

"I figured that's what you were going to tell me, Robin. And, you know, I should have been more aware at the time. Maybe you didn't have any lasting problems from it, but maybe some other girls did. I really don't know, I said.

"Oh, yeah, there were other girls who couldn't handle it, I know that. When Marianne Dickerson was in high school, she turned into an absolute fuck-slut because she wanted to prove she was not gay. She fucked the entire soccer team in one week-end at John Romig's cabin up in the Poconos. She also gave blow jobs to three of the janitors in the storage room next to the swimming pool while the team was racing right on the other side of the wall. I can still see her there, kneeling in her black racing suit, with a cock in each hand and one stuffed into her mouth. Christ, was that ever sexy looking!"

"You were there?" I yelped in surprise?

"Sure, I was her protection. No one would fuck around if they knew there were two of us to tell on them if they did something they weren't asked to do. And, also, she could always say that I was there to prove that she had really done it. That way, nobody would ever call her gay. I was at the cabin, too; but I didn't do anything more than drink a lot. Two other girls from the volleyball team were there and joined the action, but not me. Of course, the way I looked back then, nobody would have been interested anyway."

"That's only because boys that age have no idea what they want, Robin," I told her.

We talked a bit more about her connection to her former English teacher and how she had been introduced to girl-girl sex. She described a few of the things they had done together and it became evident in a few minutes that the girls had done all the 'giving' and the teacher had done all the 'receiving' during those little trysts. Apparently, Robin and the other girls who were privately 'tutored' had never really had the pleasure of the woman doing anything to them; they always did for her.

"OK, you've told me where you were; you've given me a peek into your past; you've said thank-you for me being a nice guy a long time ago. That brings us up to now; what did you want to talk about?" I asked.

"Now, it's my turn to ask," she smiled at me; "where were you this afternoon? You didn't attend any of the sessions and you were nowhere to be found. You were exceptionally late for dinner and you looked very uncomfortable when you got there."

I didn't hesitate a moment: "I had an emergency I had to take care of; a personal matter; and I just got everything cleaned up when I showed up at the dinner. I'm sorry, but it couldn't be helped."

"Hmmmmm, let me think about this for a minute. Could that emergency have been short and black? Could that emergency have been dressed all in beige? Could that emergency have had a set of tits like watermelons? Was that the emergency, Ed?" And she grinned like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.

"I…I…don't know wh…what you're talking about," I stammered, undoubtedly flushing a bright red all the way up to my bald head.

She threw back her head and laughed loud and long, and began striding back and forth across the room, sipping and pouring more Champagne as she launched into a narrative that would spell trouble for me, I knew it. "Don't try to bullshit a bullshitter, Ed; I went looking for you and when you were nowhere in sight, I asked the little Korean girl behind the registration desk if she had seen a guy with a white beard and a bald head and a blue, pin-striped suit. She told me in two seconds that you were upstairs with one of the presenters; she had seen you get into the elevator earlier. I caught a gleam in her eye and a little smile on her face and gave her your name. Sure enough, you were registered in room 414. Gee, guess where I went next? Right on, cowboy!"

"I stood outside room 414 for almost fifteen minutes and what I heard coming from the inside certainly sounded like an emergency. At one point, it sounded like somebody couldn't breathe; and another time it sounded like somebody was screaming. Gee, Ed, what sort of emergency was it?" And she pushed me backward into the chair at the side of the bureau.

I looked up at her, huge in front of me, tapping one stockinged foot as she sipped more Champagne. One knee was cocked and her suit skirt was pulled tight across her thighs and I could see that she certainly had a lot to offer a man who loved legs. They were magnificent. But I didn't have much time to reflect on her thighs, she was pressuring me for an answer. I figured I might as well tell the truth, or at least a version of it.