My wife and I had an unexpected experience recently in the northern woods. We'd rented an apartment for the weekend in a large cabin in a beautiful secluded area. The owners, an older couple, mentioned they might be on premises in the main part of the house, which we thought would be convenient in case there were any questions about the kitchen appliances, Wi-Fi, and so on. As it happened, no one seemed to be around when we arrived Friday night, so we just settled in.
The next morning, my wife got up early for a run, as she often does. She looked quite fetching in her red shorts and pink T-shirt, and I happily fell back asleep after watching her leave. A little over an hour later, she woke me up. It turned out something had happened.
My wife explained that she'd been on the porch walking back toward the apartment after her run, when she'd heard noises and yelling from inside the main part of the house. She was confused as she'd thought no one was supposed to be in there, as the owners presumably hadn't arrived. She knocked on the front door and, to her surprise it opened. Against her better judgment, she stepped inside--and saw something she wasn't supposed to have seen.
The owners had been in there, she told me, on a sofa visible from the vestibule where my wife was standing. They were a couple of about age 60, as we knew from the smiling photo we'd seen in our earlier correspondence. Except now, my wife had seen an unexpected aspect of their lives. The husband was sitting on a sofa with his wife across his lap. Her pants and panties were down around her thighs, and her bare ass was reddened. He was holding a hairbrush.
They both had looked at my wife in wide-eyed, embarrassed silence. At which point, my wife did something that only made matters worse: she burst into laughter. The absurdity of the situation overwhelmed her, and she retreated from the house, still laughing. Then she had come back in through the door to the apartment and awakened me. She was still amused as she told me the story--but that ended shortly as an envelope was slipped in under our door.
Inside was a hastily handwritten note from the landlord, saying that my wife and I would have to leave the apartment immediately; that my wife had violated the terms of the rental policy by entering the main premises uninvited; that she'd intruded on their privacy and displayed "rudeness" as well. Our weekend plans were now entirely shot, it seemed. So much for the kayaking we'd planned to do.
"Maybe you can talk to him," my wife whispered.
I had my doubts. "What do you want me to say? They're embarrassed, and they don't want us around."