"Our summer trip?"
There was a pause while a low-ball glass was brought to the lips for a long sip. After a swallow, a moment of thought, then nod of the head, he continued. "Yeah, you could say it was it was a good one."
"Different, perhaps," added his wife, in a sultry manner. She was on the other side of the group, causing every head in the group to swivel her way. Her breath-taking ankle-length dress was slit on one side, and that slit ended about a kilometer above her knee, showing a thigh so divine that one was tempted to check the floor around her for worshipers. Two men in the crowd were fantasizing about doing just that, or at least kneeling before her in one act or another. One other person was actively locking her knees to avoid acting on the same impulse.
Fewer than half of the heads returned to him as he added "Yes. 'Different' would be a good way to put it."
He continued, "So you all know that we were slated to go to Greece for August, right?" There were various nods around the circle.
"And," she broke in, "you all know, as we should have, that the country was going to shit with austerity measures."
"Yes, yes, we should have paid a bit more attention to the warnings." He took another sip. "So it turns out that the tour company we had scheduled with..."
"Which promised not only the moon and stars but also some Greek gods and goddesses to take care of our every needs while we basked in the sun," she inserted.
"And which had taken payment in full back in May - well, they don't seem to exist any more. We were at the airport in Amsterdam, waiting for the flight to Athens, when we got word that the cruise was no more."
"And my Greek gods and goddesses vanished along with it."
"So we said 'Antio' to the cruise. But looking back, we're grateful it happened, and so - a toast to the now-defunct Hellenic Couples Cruises. 'Ya Mas!'" he said, raising his glass before bringing it to his lips. He tilted his head for a sip, and kept tilting until his head was aimed at the gilded ceiling. Noticing that his tongue was still dry, he looked down at the low-ball cut crystal glass in his large hand with resignation. He looked briefly towards the bar for the status of the next round.
"And anyway," he continued, "Athens erupted in protest right as we would have been docking at the end, so it's good that we were ready to bounce in another direction. So there we are, looking at an electronic board of departures, wondering where to spend the month."
"I pleaded with David to go to Paris," added Elsie "but he was just there with Pauline last month. Plus the place shuts down in August. He wanted Austria, but the last time I was there I was bored in about 20 minutes."
"The Mediterranean is pretty crowded that time of year, so we knew it would be tough to find something available on such short notice, but I still wanted to go there. I had spent too much time picturing Elsie on a narrow beach at the bottom of a cliff, clad in only her white bikini bottom, driving some goat herder above to rush home and take his wife, harder than he has in three decades, with his eyes closed yet seeing my wife below him, gasping at his frantic thrusts." Something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye, and he turned to take his new drink from the waitress without acknowledging the blush that was rushing through her cheeks.
David picked it up from there. "So we decided that we needed a place in the airport to sit and have some wine as we tried to decide. We found a 'Wines of the World' cafe, and ordered a nice glass of Chablis for me, rosΓ© for her."
She took over for her husband, realizing at the same time how sexy he looked in his tuxedo. "The waiter was so Dutch it was hilarious. We tried to engage him in our search for a destination, but he seemed to think that Amsterdam was the only place worth considering. We told him that we had 'done' Amsterdam...."
"And Elsie made sure he got what she meant. In the typically frank way they have of looking at things, he understood and yet was totally unphased."
"But I still contend he had a little wood growing under that apron of his," Elsie concluded.
"What man has ever met you who did not, my dear?"
She responded with a chuckle and a raised glass. "Good point, darling."
The waitress finished handing out the drinks. While David continued, Elsie held up her third flute of champagne to appreciate the color. She then placed the rim of the glass below her nose, closed her eyes, and slowly inhaled. The bubbles tickled her nose, reminding her, as always, of her first glass at age fourteen. Uncle Carter's wedding, and the champagne had been delivered by a devastatingly handsome groomsman. The full story never failed to send Peter's libido into turbo-drive, and to be honest, it still had the same effect on her.
She shifted her weight, which in turn shifted the ben-wa balls that were so teasing her endurance and will power. She smiled at her lover, and slightly raised her glass as a tiny gesture of endearment. He would remain unaware of those delicious balls until they got into the limo, but he would certainly be pleased. She then turned her attention away from him and back to her husband.
"So we're in the bar, and Elsie has to go to the bathroom - which naturally is three-quarters of a mile away down the terminal. I'm bored and there's a stunning woman sitting a few tables away by a rack of local magazines. I took my glass over and attempted to start a conversation, asking her in my best, or apparently worst, Dutch if she could hand me one of the magazines. She took off her glasses and swallowed me up in a pair of the darkest brown eyes imaginable. I apparently said 'glahd' instead of 'blahd', because she looked at me and said in English, with a smirk and the cutest hint of a Slovakian accent, 'and just what kind of 'slippery' would you like me to hand you?'"
Elsie cut in. "I missed this, but came back from the bathroom and here he has found a friend. They're going through magazines, and had some running joke about lubrications. 'This one's better than K-Y', that type of thing. The sexual tension cooled slightly when I arrived, but quickly revived once I asked the waiter to bring another bottle of whatever wine she was having.
"An hour later, we're all sitting closer together than we needed to on the couch, and she couldn't keep her hands from rubbing our legs. As her flight time approached, you could tell that she was considering rescheduling and spending the night with us. We, however, didn't know where we'd be that night, so it was a bit of a gamble and we got a rain check. We exchanged info and now have a friend in Bratislava that we simply must visit for a few nights.