"Fantasy fest is fun," Chloe said.
"What?" asked Maggie.
"It's in Key West, Florida. Thousands of people show up and parade through the streets and party all night. It's illegal to be nude in public, but even a string of beads counts as clothes. Lots of strange people. Homosexuals, bi-sexuals, straights. Old, young, etc. Come on, you need a break."
Maggie indeed needed a break. She was an accountant and the last few months had been lucrative. She had worked every day, often late into the night, taking red-eye flights from place to place to serve different clients. It was time for a vacation.
"Plus, I have a hotel room," Chloe added. "And it's not easy to find one during Fantasy Fest. It'll be expensive - but worth it."
"Well..." answered Maggie, thinking, "Why not? I'll go." Chloe and Maggie had been flat mates for a year, but they were not really close friends. Chloe had a quick temper and took offense if something was not to her liking. Maggie tolerated that because she was traveling more than one-half the time on her job, owned little more than could be stuffed into a couple of suitcases, and her share of the rent was cheap.
Chloe was 32, blond and pretty, top-heavy in an attractive way, She worked as the manager of a popular restaurant. Maggie was 38, nearsighted, and, in her mind, no glamour girl, although she had a slender body and long legs.
Chloe had never been married. She was a serial monogamist, meeting a man, falling in love, slavishly devoting herself to him for a few weeks or months, and then moving on to the next man. Maggie, divorced for many years, took sex as she found it with several friends scattered around the world and occasionally with married men in lonely hotel rooms.
"You'll want to take your sexiest outfits," said Chloe.
"Then I won't need a large suitcase," answered Maggie.
**** They arrived in Key West in the late afternoon. Maggie was surprised to see chickens roaming freely up and down the streets and in the tropical gardens. Their hotel was located just off Duval Street, the main street. Their room had two queen-sized beds.
"I don't know about you," said Chloe, "but I hope to use my bed for more than sleeping. I haven't had sex since I broke up with Darrell." That had been a month before. "You won't mind, will you, if I bring a man home with me? It's so much safer bringing one to my room, rather than going to his. Of course, you're welcome to do the same."
They dressed for the evening: Chloe in a bikini bottom and a white tank top that the brown of her nipples showed through and Maggie in shorts and a flowery, button-down-the-front blouse. Chloe told her not to wear a bra - and she didn't.
Out on the streets, Maggie discovered that she was overdressed. There were women wearing much less, some painted from head to toe, others in tiny bikinis, a few displaying bare breasts and flashing the photographers who lurked around snapping pictures furiously. Some of the women were beautiful; many were fat and old. Men wore shorts and went shirtless. One of them had a scarf wrapped about his middle and his semi-hard penis protruded from beneath the scarf. Another had his penis sheathed in a large rubber tube that hung down to his knees. Ages ranged from 18 to 70, she guessed.
"Take it off," shouted a man with a camera. Chloe obliged by pulling down her tank top to display a large, firm breast, then quickly covered it up again.
"How about you?" asked the photographer, pointing at Maggie.
Maggie had a moment of panic. What if one of her clients saw her picture with bared breast posted on the internet? It could be bad for business. Best to be careful. She smiled, and kept her shirt on.
They wended their way through the streets toward their destination, a restaurant and bar Chloe knew from her previous visits to Fantasy Fest. The streets were thronged with people. A parade went by with a jazz band and on a float women dressed as pirates, devils, and sirens threw out strings of beads to the crowd. Maggie collected a string of beads and hung it around her neck. Chloe posed for photographs as they walked along.
They ate dinner at tables all jammed together, joining a quartet of chubby lesbian women dressed up in short skirts with nothing underneath and painted breasts. It was noisy. Men dropped by to say hello, display themselves, take photos, and ask for dances. Maggie unbuttoned her blouse to show her meager cleavage - but she declined to join the other women for topless photos. An outside patio was crammed with people, dancing, drinking, talking. Maggie had finished dinner when a man handed her a bottle of beer and said, "A dance for a beer."
She accepted the bottle and the man led her to an open space on the floor. He was about 40, paunchy, shirtless, his hairy chest glistening with sweat, beads hung around his neck, and he wore a pair of tight shorts that showed the outline of his penis and testicles.
"Not my dream man," she thought, "but..." In another part of the bar, Chloe was surrounded by men, posing for some with cameras.
This first man proved to be too forward, one hand finding its way to her breast while they danced and the other squeezing her buttock. She thanked him for the beer and moved along, dancing with other men, finally finding one who seemed pleasant. They chatted amiably as they drank beer while sitting in a darkened corner. Maggie's blouse had come unbuttoned nearly to her navel.
Her man, named Charles, was handsome and young and kissed her on the lips - and she didn't protest - and his hand slipped insider her blouse to feel her blouse. She was looking forward to leading him back to her room.
Suddenly, her nice man, Greg, unzipped his pants and took out his penis and pulled her hand down to his crotch. "I want you," he said..."but I can't. I promised my wife. That's her out there...in the red body paint." Maggie looked at his wife. She was tall and beautiful, and painted in brilliant colors, her firm buttocks bare, and each of her nipples outlined in a golden fan of paint.
Maggie pulled her hand away. "What did you promise your wife?"
He was insistent and pulled her hand back. "We promised that we wouldn't have sex with other people."
Maggie joked, "I thought that was your intention with me."
"We got along so well, I thought maybe you would, you know, beat me off. I'm really hot for you." He pulled her hand back to his crotch, insistent this time.
Maggie's hope for a romantic evening was dashed. "I'm sorry. I won't do that." It was pique, not modesty or prudery, that kept her from complying with him. "It's time for me to go home," she got up and walked away. "Well," she thought philosophically, "it's not the first time a budding romance has gone bad."
Chloe, by this time, had found her man. She introduced him to Maggie. "You don't mind do you, if I take Brad back to the room with me? How are you doing?"
"I didn't do so well. I'm ready to go home." Chloe's man Brad was young, more than attractive, with a surfer's blond hair and tanned skin.
"Oh, too bad. Well, let's go."
They walked together arm and arm back to the hotel. The streets were only a little less crowded than they had been hours earlier. They were all more than a little drunk.
When they got to the room, Maggie said, "I'm going to pee and go to bed."
When Maggie came out of the bathroom. Chloe and Brad were sitting on her bed, kissing. Maggie turned her back to them, took her blouse off and hung it in the closet, then took her shorts off and threw them on the floor of the closet.
"Oh, I see a naked female," laughed Brad.
"No, don't look," said Chloe. Chloe was possessive and jealous. Maggie covered herself with her arms and hands as she slipped beneath the covers of her bed, and turned the lamp off on the table beside her bed
"Let's shower," Chloe said, grabbing Brad by the hand and leading him toward the bathroom, shedding her tank top and shorts as she walked and then turning and unbuckling his belt, unbuttoning his shorts and pulling them and his underpants down over his feet.
Maggie felt lonely and sad. Her first night at Fantasy Fest had turned out poorly. She had so wanted to find a nice man. "Tomorrow", he said to herself, "I'll be better. Maybe Brad has a friend? But he's so young!"
Chloe and Brad came out of the shower and cavorted naked across the room toward the bed an arm's length from Maggie. Chloe leaned over and kissed Maggie on the cheek. "We'll try to be quiet, Maggie. But you know I am noisy."
"Don't worry about me," she said. "I'm almost asleep."
Chloe wrestled Brad down on the bed, hovered over him, felt his hard penis in her hand and then lowered her head and began to suck him. Brad moaned softly.
"I'm trying not to pay attention to you two." Maggie turned away to face the wall.
"You've got nice tits," said Brad to Maggie.
"Pay attention to me, not to her," warned Chloe.
Brad grabbed a laughing Chloe around the waist and wrestled her down onto her back in the bed. "I'm going to fuck you to death."
"Big talk," Chloe answered.
"Big dick is going inside you. Right now."
"Good night," said Maggie. She went to sleep to the sound of their sex.
***
Maggie woke up with Brad crawling in bed with her. She glanced at the clock on her bedside table. It was 5:50 a.m. "What are you doing?" she asked in a whisper.
"Getting in bed with you," said Brad, pulling the covers over himself as he lay down beside Maggie. His hand found her bare breast.
She brushed it away. "We can't do this," she said. "You're Chloe's. She'd kill me."
His hardened penis poked her in the thigh. "We'll be quiet. She's out cold." Chloe was unmoving.
Maggie contemplated the offer for a long moment. Brad's hand found its way to her vagina, his finger wiggling its way inside. She quivered - but she pushed him away. "No, I can't. It wouldn't be right. We can't." And then after a pause, "Later? Maybe?"
"What's going on over there?" came the voice of Chloe. She sat up suddenly, "Brad, you son of a bitch! You're trying to fuck my friend. You bastard.!" She leaped out of bed, naked, grabbed Brad by the arm and pulled him out of Maggie's bed. "Get out of here. Now!"
Brad quickly gathered up his clothes, and half put them on as an enraged Chloe continued to berate him. "I'm sorry, Maggie," Chloe said when he was out the door.
Maggie said, "It's okay. Nothing happened."
"No, I'm sorry, cause it isn't all right. You were going to fuck my man. My man! I heard you."
"I was just trying to get him out of my bed."
Chloe would hear none of it. She was in a jealous rage. "No, I can't tolerate that. You must leave. Now."
"But..."
"Now! I can't have a traitor in this room with me." Chloe grabbed Maggie's suitcase and threw in on the bed. "Out!" Maggie was furious, but she hadn't yet paid Chloe for her share of the hotel room and, in her accounting brain, the room was Chloe's. She got out of bed, put on shorts and blouse, opened her suitcase and threw a few things in, and left, slamming the door behind her.
"Where to go?" It was getting light. She pulled the suitcase down the sidewalk, contemplating her options. A chicken ran away from her, crowing loudly.
"Going somewhere?" It was Brad. He was sitting on a park bench outside the front door of the Hemingway Home, one of Key West's tourist attractions. He motioned her to sit down beside him. "You got thrown out also?"
She sat down. "Yeah." She looked at him and then thought about herself. "Oh, my God. I must look a fright." She ran her fingers through her hair.
"That girl friend of yours is scary."
"She's not a girl friend. Not anymore."
"What are you going to do?"
"I guess I'll go to the airport and look for a flight home. But I can't go like this. I've got to put something decent on. And comb my hair."
"I've got a house with two other guys. They won't be happy to be awakened at this hour, but so what? You can fix yourself up. And stay a while, if you want." He kissed her on the cheek. "No obligation. Seriously."
"Sounds like my best option. My only option."
"Let's go then. It's a short walk. Just remember one thing."
"What?"
"Revenge is the best medicine."
