A Room With A View

This is chapter 12 of Window Weather, a serial fiction novel on FITK



“Care for something to drink, Sean?”

Sally had returned from the bathroom wearing a silk nightgown: oriental poppy orange emblazoned with a red and black dragon. Sean could see (from the glimpses of her arms and legs that peeked through the fabric) that Sally kept herself in shape. Maybe she could beat him up.

“Thanks, do you have any red wine?”

“I’d have thought you were a hard liquor kind of guy, you know—whiskey, gin, maybe a cocktail… shaken not stirred... ”

“I’m just a plain Sean, Sally, not Sean Connery, much less a James Bond.”

“So, who were those guys?” Sally said as she poured, “And what did they want with you?”

“I don’t know, really,” said Sean, “But I suspect that they weren’t there to welcome me to Iceland. I’ve been beaten up before. I know the signs.”

Sally handed Sean his wine. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was first-rate. No mini-bar vintages for Ms. O’Donnell.

“I take it they weren’t part of your Scandinavian studies program.”

“Hm. I hope tonight was an aberration.”

“Perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity?” said Sally, who was enjoying her role of interrogator.

Sean was taken aback at her comment—he hoped that it was a fluke. He began to think that her apartment might not be the best place to spend the night. It was time to change the conversation.

“How about you Sally? Any luck with the locals?” he said, intending to turn the spotlight away from himself.  Sean wanted to get back to his apartment but also didn’t want to tangle with those thugs from the nightclub. He wondered if they thought that Sean was Billy and they had some kind of score they wanted to settle with him.

“Well, I did make a dinner date for tomorrow night. A professor of some sort, an American. He seemed harmless enough. You never know about that kind, though. Most of them are hopeless neurotics but some are… enthusiastic. Hahaha! That’s how I met my last husband. He was VERY ENTHUSIASTIC. For a while anyway. With me that is. What about you, have you had much experience, I mean besides your current ‘relationship?’”

“There was someone, once, when I was just out of college,” said Sean, “She seemed to really love me, although I think what she really wanted was to get out of her parents’ control."

“That’s been the case more often than not with the experiences of my old girlfriends,” Sally said,  “I mean a guy is nice to have around, but it’s more important, at least for a lot of women, to have a life of one’s own. It is a rare man who can understand that a woman would feel that way. It is especially so with a younger man,” Sally said, “So, how did your ‘thing’ with her end up?”

“She just stopped loving me,” said Sean, “That’s what happened.”

“She kicked you out?”

“No, I think she still liked having a man around. But she really enjoyed the fact that she had been able to shut me out of intimacy. I think that was some kind of strange reverse conquest for her. I had to finally ask her to leave.”

“Were you seeing someone else?”

“I waited for twenty-fours,” said Sean, “The next one didn’t work out either, but for a whole different set of reasons.”

“Going from too much of nothing to too much of everything?”

“Something like that. I learned a lot. She had a ‘special’ wiggle,” said Sean, peeking out the window. The goons were gone.

“Ahahahah! Sean, you’re alright,” said Sally, as she let her gown open a bit, “Just between you and me… I could probably show you another thing or two... ”

Sally began looking better after Sean finished his first glass of wine. She was looking even better after he finished the second.

“Don’t feel that I’m not enjoying your company, Sally, but I think I’d better take a taxi back to my apartment.”

“Do you think it’s alright? I would feel terrible if something bad were to happened to you,” Sally said, looking straight at him, “But I understand. You really do want to remain faithful, don’t you?”

Sean couldn’t figure Sally out. There was more to her than she let on. He got the feeling that she was testing him.

“I’ll be fine,” said Sean, “There’s a taxi stand in front of the hotel.”

“I could see that you were fine from the moment I first saw you.”



Next Chapter: Ole