The call was unexpected and the caller even more so. Penny is a young lady of my acquaintance and quite beautiful in a long legged full-bodied, wholesome kind of way. Quiet and shy for the most part. She would be the last person I'd ever expect to call me. I didn't even know she had my number. I do know that I had never given it to her but then I realized that I was listed in the phonebook.
"Mr. Mark, this is Penny. You know, from the dinner." Her deep husky, exotic voice dripped from the phone.
My mind overlaid it on my mental image of her and I suddenly realized just how erotic she and her voice were. I cleared my throat for a second and asked, "Yes Penny, what can I do for you?"
"It's more like, what we can do for each other. Can you meet me somewhere? I need to ask a favor of you."
My mind gave a jump at the first part of what she said. Visions of all the sexy things we could do together crowded my mind as a smile came to my lips. Me meeting her somewhere wasn't a problem on my part, but it might be on hers. This is after all, a small backwoods Texas town and my being white and her being black could cause problems even in this day and age. My mind gave another jump at the word favor. More visions floated to the surface.
"Ok, where would you like to meet?" I replied in as calm a voice as I could muster. My mind wanted to dwell on naughty things as only the mind of a dirty old man can.
"I have a room at the Parkside Inn, room 112. Can you meet me here in about an hour?"
"Sure but can you tell me a little of what this is about?"
"You'll find out when you get here. I promise you won't be disappointed."
Then she hung up.
I stood there with the phone to my ear for nearly a minute more, fantasies buzzing here and there. Finally, the buzzing of a dead line made me put it down. I remained where I was, my mind lost in a haze of what ifs.
*****
I drove through the parking lot to the very back and parked. I sat and watched the lot for a while. What I was looking for I didn't know, and probably wouldn't recognize it if I did see it. I was nervous, very nervous. I had taken a quick shower before I left, even though I had only had one an hour before.
Why was I so nervous? Questions swam around in my head like so many fish. I didn't have many answers. Why had Penny really called me? I had no answer to that question but it did answer the original one of why I was so nervous. How much did I trust her and how well did I know her? Yeah, more questions. Could this be one of those set ups that you read about in the paper or see on TV? Not very likely, my mind supplied, as I'm neither rich nor famous.
Another answer that was highlighted by my mind was that I had never been alone with a black woman in my life, much less had anything sexual to do with one. That alone scared the hell out of me. Would I or could I measure up and to whom for that matter. Could I go through with it, if it happened?
I'm old and pretty set in my ways. Despite my upbringing in the old south, I don't consider myself to be bigoted. But am I? Color was just that to me; color. Black, brown, red, pink, yellow. Color, like beauty was only skin-deep. The person wearing it made all the difference and Penny was one of the nicest, kindest people I had ever met.
I took a deep breath and opened the car door. Now was the time to find out just what was up and how bad my mind was trying to scare me. I was probably making a mountain out of a molehill. She probably wanted me to lend her a little money or something just as innocent.
*****
I knocked on the door of room 112. No one answered the door. I stood there confused for a second. Did I remember the number wrong?
I started to turn away, when the door opened a crack, and Penny's voice said, "I had to make sure it was you."
"Well, I was when I left home." I said to cover my nervousness.
"Come on in, I won't bite you. Well, not unless you want me to." She replied with a deep chuckle.
I felt funny as I slipped into the room through the partially opened door. It was as though I was doing something elicited, something naughty. I hadn't felt this way since before my wife and I had been married. The few times we had slipped away to a motel to fuck our brains out in wild abandon. It had been exciting then and it felt much the same now.
Penny closed the door and turned to me, a big smile on her face. "I wasn't sure if you'd come or not."
"I nearly didn't." I admitted as my eyes wandered over the wispy white negligee that accentuated more than hid her lush body. I could feel my manhood swell in the confines of my left pants leg. I had never seen her in anything but her waitress uniform and this all felt so unreal for some reason.
"I nearly didn't answer the door." was her confession in reply.
There was a long nervous silence and then we both tried to talk at the same time. I couldn't keep my eyes off the dark mystery under that thin white night gown and Penny seemed both nervous and excited by my stares.
"You go first." I told her.
"Okay." She took a deep breath. "I know that your wife died several years ago but you might not know that my husband died early last year." She blurted out.
"No, I didn't know that. I'm sorry to hear it." I said softly. "Losing a mate is a lot harder than most people realize. How long were the two of you married?"
"Almost twenty two years. I was sixteen and he was twenty-one, when we ran away together. It was hard at first, no money, lousy jobs, but as the years went by, it got better and better. We were to the point of having it made. Then about two years ago, he got sick. He spent more time in hospitals than he spent at home and in the end he died in one."
"I'm sorry, that must have been a very rough time for you. I was lucky in a way, my wife died in her sleep. We never knew anything was wrong with her before that. At least you had a chance to say good bye."
Her eyes were on the floor and she nodded slowly. "Yeah. I guess that was a good thing, but to watch him waste away, wasn't"
