It had been a few days since the party where Callie and Rebecca had stayed most of the night with me. I spent all of my free time thinking about that night and the crazy scenes that had accompanied it. I had seen women engaging in bisexual sex and a women's ejaculation for the first time, watched a girl pee and been strangely aroused, and nearly had a tongue up my ass. It was the first time for all of these things for me and I walked around campus like a new man. The rumors about what might have happened in my room that night had already started since it turns out that the rhythmic noises and loud orgasms of the girls were impossible to sleep through for some of my brothers.
I had done nothing to fuel these rumors since I had learned at an early age that women do not like when their sexual activities are discussed by juvenile boys around a locker room bench. That doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the attention that the speculation was causing, but I did nothing more than offer a weak smile when anybody asked what had happened that night. In the chapter house's cafeteria during dinner one night, the social director tried to put me on the spot when he asked in front of a suddenly silent and leaning forward room, just what had occurred on Friday night. I smiled the smile of someone who knows something that will not be told and went back to eating my ravioli.
Callie and I saw each other again on Tuesday, the first time that we had coinciding shifts together. She walked outside to the resort's pool bar to check on me. According to the computer in her office the "Tiki Lounge" as I called it, was having a brisk sales day. She stood beneath a palm tree's shade and watched as I hustled to reduce the line of thirsty tourists in bathing suits in front of the service counter. Once the line of seven or eight couples had been taken care of, I turned to check on the patrons sitting around the bar itself. Almost all of the pool bar's twelve stools were occupied by folks taking a break from the sun and people were coming and going constantly requiring my attention.
This was only two years after the movie "Cocktail" was in theaters. Every person who approached the bar would make some comment about the similarity between my flowered shirts, Ray-Ban sunglasses, the hut's thatched roof, or the tropical-style drinks and the movie that was still fresh in their minds. I was frankly tired of being hailed as "Tom Cruise" by goombas from New York and New Jersey, but if I had to be compared to a movie star, the pre-nutjob Tom was not a bad one. This day was no different, since one couple sitting in my shade was from Rockaway, NY and "Vinnie" (I always called them Vinnie in my mind.) was bragging about something or other; I didn't really pay attention to their loud posturing other than to add the appropriate head nod or "Oh yeah?" when the pauses came in their stories.
Vinnie ordered another imported beer and his girl asked for another Daiquiri. Since his story about his business was apparently over and I was not the enthusiastic listener he'd hoped for he stood up and headed back over to his lounge chair by the water slide. To my surprise, the bikini stayed to drink her cocktail in the shade. A little small talk in between pouring drinks was all I could offer her. I'd noticed that she had a great body covered by a skimpy outfit, but all thoughts of sex at that time involved Callie and Rebecca so I didn't really let my mind head down that road with this New Yorker.
When my phone rang, I was surprised to hear Callie's voice on the other end.
"'You enjoying the view?"
"I was until you went back inside."
"I didn't even know that you'd seen me."
"Situational awareness," I whispered into the receiver. "You don't spend all day every day out here without knowing where the good looking ones are." No seat around the octagonal bar was more than twelve feet from me, so I covered the phone with my hand to try to stifle the conversation from the ears of would be listeners.
"Well, when Guido left his girl there with you, I thought I'd better warn you discreetly about them. Is this discreet enough for you?" she asked, indicating the phone call rather than a personal visit. It was amusing to me that she called them "Guido" instead of my "Vinnie".
I laughed, "Warn me? What do you mean?"
"Well, security thinks those two are swingers according to the night's log entries. Apparently, they received several calls about the noises from their room. The entry reads ‘Guest answered the door and promised to try to keep the noise down. Several other couples scantily dressed evident.' I bet those old pervs in security spent half the night patrolling that hallway and listening at that door."
"What do you want me to do? Get them drunk and ask if we can join them?" I joked while trying to make sure that nobody at the bar could hear me.
"Shhhh," she chided, "do you want her to hear you?" After I laughed again, she continued, "I'm just warning you that you might get propositioned and that since you got a little ‘hinky' when someone else's fingers got near your butt the other night, you might want to consider what a roomful of them might do to you."
"Sorry lady, I'm spoken for." I whispered into the phone. I knew she was standing not thirty feet away. The game room's large picture windows were behind the bar, and in the reflection of my computer monitor's screen I could see a miniature Callie holding a house phone to her ear. It was an easy pick; she'd worn a white blouse and red skirt that day. To say she stood out amongst the t-shirts and board shorts of the flabby tourists was an understatement. And like I mentioned, I always knew where the pretty girls were with my three hundred sixty degree view of the pool area and a pair of sunglasses hiding the direction of my glances.
Her reply came quickly, "Right answer. You win a prize." I still hadn't turned to look directly at her, since pretending like I didn't know she could see me was still part of the game. "Will you take the blond or the brunette, sir?"
The light-hearted banter was fun but this sounded like a trick question. By "brunette", did she mean Rebecca or the Italian bikini model sitting in front of me? In any case, I answered quickly since the appearance of taking too much time to think of a reply could be just as damaging as the wrong response. "Parts of me may enjoy the ‘dark haired prizes' that have been awarded already, but my head is hoping to win the sweepstakes and I understand that the blond is the grand prize in that contest."
"You're so full of shit. Bartenders; you guys have always got a line, don't you?" Her pretend scolding was funny but I wanted to assure her that Guido/Vinnie's girl wasn't even on my radar.
"I'm serious, ma'am," I drawled in my goofiest southern accent, "thar ain't but one lady what my eyes kin see."
I turned to look directly at her and said into the phone, "Can we talk about this later? I don't want to miss it when I get invited to the gang bang."
She snorted then tried to cover it by flipping me the bird. Realizing she was in a game room for children, she looked around anxiously and seeing nobody who had caught the gesture, laughed at me again. She said, "Don't make fun of me for growing up in the country. We ain't all dumb, you know." She said as she mimicked my own fake accent. Hanging up without a further word, she stuck her tongue out at me through the window and headed back to the café.
I didn't see her for the rest of the day, but when Paula brought my meal from the snack bar, I was quite surprised. I usually went up to the snack bar and brought my lunch back to the hut, but this personal service was an unexpected bit of attention. I hadn't even ordered my lunch yet, but it was easy for her to predict what I'd want and when I'd be hungry. I ordered a plain burger and spiced fries every day at around 2:30.
"'Tired of being cooped up in that little snack bar?" I asked.
She looked around at the drinkers under the shade of the palm fronds and said "I was just wondering how the party went."
In my mind, I was immediately worried that Paula, who had a reputation for seeing everything that went on at the resort, knew about my "date" with one of our bosses. If it leaked out that one of the assistant food and beverage managers was doing a bartender, it would not be good for someone's career in management.
I tried to cover by answering noncommittally, "It was a good party. Lots of people came but I went to bed early." All three statements were technically true, but I hoped that she didn't know how literally I meant it.
"I'd like to go to one of those parties some day. Could I come even though I'm not a student?"
"Absolutely. I'll keep you in mind for next time." Satisfied with this answer, she turned and started walking back to the snack bar without another word. "Playing coy, huh?" I thought. Again, she had no idea how literally my statements had been meant since my guests had "absolutely" been allowed "to come" even though they were not students. Furthermore, I was relieved that she didn't seem to know about my tryst with our co-worker.
I may have watched her walk away from me for too long. The girls that worked in the snack bar had a pair of white shorts as their uniform and it was my favorite pastime to try to see what type of underwear they had on beneath them. I was confused and trying to choose when the Guido-ette jolted me out of my staring.
Apparently the girl from Rockaway had heard and seen this exchange, because the next words I heard were in that annoying (to me) accent, "You wanna bring her to a party, you should bring her to one we're havin' tonight." What I heard when she said it though, was the voice of the female lead in the television show "The Nanny". I turned to look at her and tried to think of an answer that would not insult her. I've got nothing against swingers, or hot Italian girls, but I was more interested in spending my time with my manager at this point. I politely declined and she eventually went back to sit with Vinnie at the pool. Before she left, she said, "Nothing."
"What?" I asked.
"You were trying to figure out what kind of underwear that girl was wearing. She ain't wearin' any."
The rest of the shift was spent pouring drinks and watching the ass on the Italian job while thinking about my next encounter with Callie. I spent a lot of time trying to decipher the odd relationship she had with Rebecca and how she had always seemed to be in charge of what the younger girl did when they spent the night with me. What I didn't know at the time, was that Rebecca had been hired about two months ago to work in the accounting department of the resort, an area that I never dealt with unless my register had a discrepancy in my drawer's money.
