Chapter 2: The Very Good Trip
Senko felt the bed shake and woke up for a moment. Benoit was coming home late again from work. She was used to all of the fragrances that clung to his body from the laboratory, but something about this one made her nose twitch. She shifted in bed and the feeling of the silk sheets against her nipples made her shiver. The dark little buttons on her breasts grew instantly hard and she felt her body growing moist and soft. Why did she feel so turned on all of the sudden? What day was it? No, she wasn't ovulating. It was bizarre: she felt sure that it was the smell that had lit her fire, not her husband, but had no idea why. She thought about how early the next morning she had to get up in order to get to the airport and meet Baia and Anastasia. Now that she was suddenly so turned on, there was only one way to get to sleep. She moved her hand slowly between her legs and, surprised to find her vagina extremely wet, moved her probing finger up to gently caress her clit until she drifted off into an erotic dream that she had forgotten by morning.
Her alarm woke her about 4 hours later. Everything was packed but her cosmetics, because she planned to take a quick shower before heading out. A few minutes later, when she picked up the shampoo bottle to wash her hair in the shower, she found the bottle was empty. She added a little water and shook it and managed to get enough for one last wash. She conditioned, combed, washed every inch of her body carefully, and then rinsed her hair while combing it a second time. After she had dried off and gotten dressed, she thought to check the bathroom cabinet. Benoit often brought home samples of his products and stored them there for some reason, and she had occasionally tried them out of curiosity. But the cabinet was empty. She gave up on it, but when she got back to the room she noticed one of the lab shampoo bottles inside Benoit's canvas bag, next to the dresser. She figured it was just to restock the bathroom closet, and gingerly took it from his bag, apologizing under her breath for the invasion, then slipping it into her cosmetic case. The case got stuffed into the suitcase, and she was gone.
She met Baia and Anastasia at the gate for their flight to Hawaii. They'd been planning the trip for two years now. Back in college they had explored the coast of northern California together, but for the last six years they had only seen each other twice. Senko saw Anastasia first. She was the tallest of the three, and had long brown that fell in gentle curves over a short leather jacket. She had high cheekbones and full lips, Central Asian and Eastern European features gracefully combined with those piercing Georgian eyes. They hugged tight and hard, laughing, and then Senko saw Baia running through the crowded terminal toward them, hair in her eyes, trying to hold on to an enormous purse with one hand and keep a voluminous black shawl over her shoulders with the other.
"That won't fit under your seat!" Senko said, laughing over Anastasia's shoulder.
Baia threw down the bag, pushed the hair out of her eyes, and joined in the hug.
Some bald-head in rumpled clothing pushed passed them, muttering about "right in everybody's way" and smelling like newspapers and french fries. But after he passed he looked back over his shoulder long enough to run right into a lady who was immersed in her cellphone. The grumpy old man's glasses flew off, and the lady's paper take-out bag burst open. Kung pao chicken and rice littered the floor around them.
"Damn, girls," said Baia, "We're making a mess already!"
She had no idea about the kind of mess they would be in together by the end of their trip, nor how beautiful it would be as they all came at the same time, engulfed in a huge, swirling, massaging mass of sentient lather and foam. Baia was half Brazilian and half Bolivian. The intellectual of the bunch, she was a philosophy professor at Stanford. She broke off from the hug, took off the shawl and stuffed it in her bag. She was wearing a simple black tank-top and jeans. Fanning her flushed face with her hand, she shook her hair, which fell unevenly between her ears and shoulders.
"You cut your hair." Said Senko with a serious look on her face. "Hmmm..."
Baia's eyes grew wide a moment and then the three of them burst out laughing again.