The Cayute Room

I was desperate for money, as usual, so when I saw the notice hanging on a bulletin board at the Daily Grind, the coffee shop I liked to frequent, I decided to follow up on it. It promised $50 and a free meal to anyone with a driver's license who would consent to listen to a pitch for condo timeshares for sale in Puerto Penasco. I had plenty of free time on my hands -- a product of the writer's block I was wrestling with -- so I called the number on the little slip I had torn off of the flyer. An answering machine picked up and instructed me to leave my name, my driver's license number and a telephone number at which I could be reached. I obliged them, and then, to be honest, I forgot all about it.

I was sitting in the coffee shop making another vain attempt to write while fending off the attentions of this boy who insisted on hitting on me (he said he thought my glasses were cute, and he liked my iBook) when the timeshare marketing firm called me back. A man with a faintly Russian accent told me that the company was having another "event" tomorrow evening, and he gave me the address of a hotel and the name of a conference room -- the Cayute room -- where the meeting would be held. In my mind the $50 was already spent: a few new bras and a badly needed round of dry-cleaning.

The time for the "event" came and I drove out to the hotel, which was situated pretty far up in the foothills, near one of the resort spas. I wasn't sure how to dress, so I went for a quasi-professional look. I wore my hair back, and I put on a blouse, a jacket, and a skirt. In the mirror before I left, I thought I looked ready for a job interview. I don't know what came over me; I thought it seemed appropriate to look as though I might invest in a timeshare. But then I looked so prim in it, I decided to tart myself up a little with some red lipstick and a hint of mascara. And I changed into the sexiest pair of panties I had too. it wasn't often that I wore a skirt, and seemed appropriate to commemorate the occasion. I had this dumb notion that somebody might somehow be able to see up my skirt when I wore one, and this vague notion always made me reach for the black lacy thong. I know, it was silly.

The thing is, I have never been altogether comfortable with how I look. I never know what balance to strike between seeming sexy and seeming serious. I want to be taken seriously but I don't want to seem like a dour prude, a sexless, humorless feminist who has no appreciation for the gift God gave to women to be beautiful. So I find myself making all these compromises, wearing sexy underwear under my dowdy clothes or wearing shoes that accentuated and flaunted my slender ankles when I wore a skirt, or wearing button-down shirts that were just tight enough to make my breasts, which are neither large nor small, strain against the fabric pulled taut across them. But I don't want men to condescend to me or be so bowled over by my appearance that they are perpetually tongue-tied. I look at myself in the mirror sometimes and wonder what men really see. I know that I thought to be pretty, but what does that even mean?

I like to look at myself and pretend I'm someone else. Sometimes I can get myself really turned on that way by touching myself as I watch, thinking I'm this other women who is putting on a show. I'll rub my breasts and make my nipples hard, and I'll bend over and look at my ass in the mirror over my shoulder and wiggle it a little. I'll think, Look at that slut, she's just giving it away, and I'll slip a finger into my cunt, which by that time would be rather wet. When I'm really hot and bothered, I will try down and try to give my own nipples a suck, but I can't quite reach to do that.

I parked at the hotel and I found my way to the Cayute room just in time and let myself in. At the front of the room was a young guy in a suit, one of those eager ultra-American types who always seem to be smiling and always seem to be selling something, and a shorter, more frazzled looking older man who looked like he just wandered off a golf course somewhere. They stood in front of a projection screen and paced impatiently, as though they were eager to begin. Oddly enough, all the other attendees, who were seated around the long table in rotating office chairs, were women. And not just a garden variety of women, but young women, attractive ones, about seven or eight of them. It seemed an odd coincidence. A lot of them looked to be students at the university, and certainly none of them were older than 30. They were all sitting quietly; some were flipping through magazines they had brought with them, others had brought water bottles and were drinking, some were scrutinizing their cell phones carefully.

After I took my seat, next to a cheerful looking blonde woman with broad swimmer's shoulders and big breasts packed into a tight sweater that couldn't have ever fit comfortably. She smiled at me and rolled her eyes, as if she knew how absurd this pitch was going to be already. I smiled back and crossed my legs. Still playing the professional, I pulled a pencil from my purse., as if I were going to take notes.

The younger looking man began to deliver his spiel. He had a mellifluous voice that was soothing to listen to, kind of like the voices you hear on the radio at night. He began on a rather philosophical note for a condo sales pitch by saying things about the nature of time, about how time sharing is seen as a negative thing, but what else do we really have to share, what else is in such limited supply? What his company seeks in its developments and properties is to foster is an environment that makes you forget about time, that allows you to feel like you have all the time in the world, the way you feel when you are a child. Then he started to talk about the Mexican town on the coast of the Gulf of California where these condos were, and I began to tune him out and took the opportunity to size up the other women who were here seated around the conference table with me.

Across the table from me were a red-haired woman, a punk-rock chick in a black T-shirt, scowling with undisguised skepticism and scorn, and a professional looking woman wearing a tan jacket over what looked to be an expensive silk blouse. She seemed rather haughty from her bearing, and she was busy toying with a BlackBerry, as if she had all sorts of important emails to sift through. On my left was the cheerful blonde; she looked like someone I might have known in high school, the same cheerful blankness I associate with my friends in those days. On my right was a vaguely Hispanic-looking woman with light-brown skin and ample black curly hair. She seemed as though she might be South American, but when I heard her speak -- some small talk to the woman beside her -- she didn't have much of an accent.

The girl she talked to was curious-looking; I found her immediately fascinating. She seemed to be really young, possibly a teenager, yet was made up in an extremely elaborate way. She had blush on her cheeks over a powder base, shaded carefully to give her profile a sharper definition and exquisitely blended eye-shadow that her eyes seem wide and round, and her brows were plucked with perfect symmetrical precision. She had what might have been two different coats of lipstick on topped with a gloss that made her lips shine in the conference room's fluorescent light. But underneath all that, her face with still so girlish, still a touch plump with baby fat. And she was dressed like a teenager, with a tight, hooded sweatshirt over a belly shirt, and shorts and sandals. Her legs and face looked deeply bronzed, darker than the South American next to her; probably she spent a lot of time in the tanning booth.

I don't know why I was so fascinated with her. I guess I have never been all that into makeup and stuff like that, yet here was this girl who was adorned like those grand dames in 1970s glamour photos of royalty, or expensive women you'd see on an evening soap opera. It was as though she inherited her grandmother's cosmetics case or something. It was a strange preoccupation for someone who was still young, whose skin was obviously still fair, unwrinkled, and as far as I could see, unblemished. Maybe it was all artistry. But even through that mask she had on, so much petulant personality and rambunctiousness came through. Her eyes widened and narrowed, and she made all these wry dismissive expressions in response to the things the man lecturing to us about condos was saying. She seemed to be cracking herself up.

I noticed there were video cameras set up in the room that weren't pointing at the screen. I asked the woman beside me what they were for, and she told me that they had explained that the whole meeting was being filmed as if it were a focus group so that they could work on improving their customer service. It seemed a little weird that they would film us eating though, as I could smell that they were bringing in the food first, probably to get us sated and mellow and receptive to their pitch.

"I know you are thinking, Why on earth would a woman like me need a vacation property? But what is a vacation, really? It's an escape, one we've all earned, one we all could use. It's a getaway from the responsibilities and cares that besiege us in our daily adult life. More than ever we are feeling these pressures, and more than ever we need to get away from them, to somewhere where time is forgotten and we can indulge ourselves, and return to the world refreshed, all our energies and hopes and dreams restored. That is what we are here to think and talk about, and our hope is that we will be able to rekindle some of the leisure and freedom and pleasure that we think our vacation resorts are able to provide you."

The younger man then told us to turn off our cell phones and dimmed the lights in the room slightly as the older man brought around the food, which smelled delicious. Along with a salad there was one of the best pieces of salmon I ever tasted, along with some perfectly sauteed vegetables, and a glass of red wine. It wasn't your standard catered fare, it tasted made to order, something appropriate for a bistro, not a sales meeting like we were attending. I wasn't the only one who was surprised. The other women's eyes lit up at the sight of it, and there were lots of mmms and ahhs as we ate, lots of small talk between forkfuls about how good it was and how none of them had expected that and how they might have to come hear sales pitches every day of the week if it was going to be like this.

The younger man told us the food had been prepared by the chefs who work at the resort in Puerto Penasco. And it was delicious, the most delectable food I may ever have tasted. The fish was so light, so flaky, so rich, all at the same time. And the sauce, a buttery, velvety, creamy delight that seemed to coat my entire mouth with a warm, soothing sensation. It reminded me of meals my mother used to make me, before she had to go to work and she still cooked big meals for my father and my sister and me. I could see by all the nodding heads and smiles that the other women agreed.

The older man, who revealed himself to be the Russian man who had returned my call, spoke a few words about the philosophy of the company they represented, a joint Russian-Mexican venture devoted to excellence in decadence and making American dreams come true in resorts abroad all over the world. It was rude, but something about his voice made me want to laugh, and I wasn't alone, because a few of the other women seemed to be suppressing giggles as well. Maybe it was the way he dropped the articles from his sentences and seemed to put the stress on the wrong syllable when he uttered things like "finest luxury of domestic comfort and care in residence make forget all inhibition." I caught the eye of the red-haired woman across the table, who smiled at me knowingly, as though we were sharing a secret about how neither of us could believe we were here listening to this nonsense. It was reassuring. These women were probably all a lot like me, and we weren't going to get swept up into one of those buying frenzies, where the customers all egg each other on in their enthusiasm. She even wore glasses like mine, the red-haired woman. Except hers looked expensive and European, while mine seemed like the knockoff version of what she had. Hers were tortoise-shell, in a color to suit her complexion, and perfectly proportioned to her face to frame her eyes and accentuate them and the perfect oval of her head.

Apparently there was going to be a slide show while we ate, as the younger man fired up a projector in the back of the room, and started the other cameras rolling as well, pushing buttons and adjusting dials and pointing them where he wanted them. The first few images were of innocuous looking apartment towers and of sandy pristine beaches. Some were brightly lit, immaculate interiors, some were shots of obviously wealthy people having night on the town, eating in darkened restaurants or dancing in nightclubs. The men were all square-jawed and handsome, the women impossibly beautiful and elegant. Like any one of the women in the room could afford this sort of life. It was beyond anything I'd ever dreamed of, even when I was a little girl with big dreams, and still was impressed with glamour and money.

My mind was starting to drift. It was hard to pay attention to the slides, or the man's droning pitch that accompanied it. Across the table, I noticed the redhead had the most amazing features, smooth high cheekbones and a perfectly rounded, elegant chin, and a regal nose. Her neck was long and smooth, and she wore a gold necklace that seemed to glow in contrast to her pale skin. She looked familiar to me suddenly, and I wondered where I knew her from, if perhaps I temped in an office where she worked. She was dressed in a business suit, the sort of thing you could buy at Ann Taylor. I wondered how old she was -- 31 or 32 maybe. I watched her slide a sliver of carrot between her full ruby lips and close her eyes in sheer delight, as if it were the most exotic and wonderful bite of food she'd ever tasted. Then I thought she might have winked at me, which made me want to laugh a little bit. Though I wasn't sure if she had, I winked back, thinking how we were co-conspirators bilking out this incredible meal just because we were wise enough to show up. I wondered what whim could have possibly brought a woman like her here. She seemed far too well put together to need the money or the meal, which she was, in fact, relishing.

But it was obvious why the woman beside her was here. She definitely seemed like she could use the cash and a meal or two. She had the bedraggled, hard-livin' look of a punk-rock scenester, with a pixie-short dyed-black hair, heavy black mascara around her eyes, a ring through her left nostril, a black Germs T-shirt and tattoos up and down her arms. She probably had on striped tights and combat boots or something to complete her look. She was pale in the precise opposite way then the woman beside her -- she had the wan, peaked look of a junkie, with clammy, plasticine skin. She probably did the whole circuit of sketchy money-making gigs; I could see her donating plasma and volunteering for medical experiments and posing nude for drawing classes before picking up shifts at a one of strip clubs off the freeway. The food seemed to be helping her color though, it seemed to bringing life to her washed-out features. I heard her tell the redhead, who I swear had winked at me again, "I usually try to eat vegan, but I don't know. This smells so good, it's impossible to resist!" With that she savored another bite of the salmon, and licked her lips uncontrollably. She even started to lick her fingertips, and the black polish on her nails.

While we continued to eat, slides of the resort in Puerto Penasco were being flashed up on the screen, very peaceful blue skies and serene vistas of the ocean and lots of beautiful smiling brown-skinned women in bikinis and muscle bound cabana boys. I was about to shovel in another forkful of arugula when I thought I saw out of the corner of my eye that one of the women in one of the slides was totally topless. I had this flash of nipple skitter across my retina, but when I turned to look, I saw that it was a new slide, of a couple on horseback riding on the beach.

The girl beside me must have been starving, because she wolfed it all down in a few minutes and seemed to have worked herself up a bit. She was a little flushed and her eyes gleamed and her smile seemed even wider than it had before. She put her hand on my arm and said, "Wasn't that like the best salmon you ever tasted?" She was sweet, and I smiled and agreed. It was nice to have her touching me, and it was glad I was next to her. I could tell by something in her face that I was going to want to get to know her better. I felt extremely comfortable being near her. She told me her name was Steph, and she told me that she liked my hair, which was nice. I complimented her shoes, these great round-toe shoes with a strap-back and a chunky heel that made me a little envious.

Another slide seemed sort of curious, another night club shot, except the elegant woman's breast was hanging out of her dress, and I thought one of the men held his penis in his hand. Sometimes I have an overheated imagination, and I think to myself I need to get laid a little more or something. I looked again and saw it was a totally normal picture, and all the participants were fully clothed, if looking rather lasciviously at one another.

I wasn't sure if we were all strangers here or not, I couldn't tell when I came in if there had been any girls who had come together. But we all seemed to bond over the food. The volume in the room got noticeably louder, and there was lots of giddy laughter and lots of preening behavior, lots of smiles and hands brushing through hair. Everyone had tilted toward someone else to get to know them better, which made sense, as the man had told us that we may as well get comfortable and get to know one another. Across the table from Steph and me, I thought I caught a glimpse of the pixie woman holding hands with the redhead next to her. That couldn't be right. What was certain was how intently they were looking into each other's eyes, and how deeply both were blushing, as if they had just shared the most intimate secrets. It was especially obvious with the redhead, whose skin was so pale. "Look at them," I said Steph. "That's so cute!" I hardly knew what I was saying, because I usually don't say things like that, certainly about random women I see. But they were cute, eating their salmon and making puppy-dog eyes at each other.

I thought I saw another couple of women putting forkfuls of food in each other's mouths, but that must have been an optical illusion. And surely that woman in the tan jacket wasn't just sucking her thumb. Probably it was just that the food was so good she wanted to lick every last morsel of it off her fingers. Everyone seemed to be talking louder and enjoying themselves, and I guess the wine the men had served had really loosened everyone up. I had barely touched mine, though, and even still I was feeling pretty good. I asked Steph if she liked the wine, and she started to snicker and blush, and then she said, "Silly, I'm not allowed to drink wine! Are you trying to get me in trouble?"

I laughed too. It was silly. Honestly I was feeling strangely giddy, and I wasn't sure if I was going to even be able to pretend to concentrate on the sales pitch. I was holding Steph's hand in my lap, and I was telling her about how she had the sweetest sounding laugh, like a little girl's laugh, and how it made me feel like I was a little girl again, playing dolls with my girlfriends from next door. She kept laughing and smiling demurely, as though she were trying to flirt with me. It was odd, but I didn't mind so much. I could trust Steph wouldn't try to do anything that would make me uncomfortable.