Hotel Photographer Pt. 35
All seemed fine again at first, if not quite the Shangri La a beach holiday promised. Good news was that Akemi had decided not to visit Japan again after all, not in the near future at least. Remember, she'd planned another visit to her country- it was the impetus for our spur of the moment package tour to the Caribbean. We had to talk things out.
That trip home of hers- it would have been the third this year- was on indefinite hold- or else she had a timetable I wasn't privy to.
The bad news was that she might have postponed the visit there to accommodate Eric's here.
Anyway I felt pretty good knowing she'd be here, I could have her for a while.
The calm- mine I mean- didn't last. Hell, a lot was going on beyond the marriage. Pandemic? How'd that happen? In my lifetime? Damn. And what else? Oh, anyone mention politics? The charm of home can wear off pretty fast when those charged with governing are fools and worse. Check the news and discover the president of your country is spending his time watching golf, not from any interest in the tournament underway but because he owned the course where it took place! So the world was crumbling or imploding- at least seemed to be some of the time. I could go into that story but it's not nearly as worth the telling or hearing as mine with Akemi, which, for all its harrowing aspects (from her husband's point of view), is all about beauty. That of my wife, woman who surprised me by coming into my life, is a big part of what compels me to write. I'd like it to ooze out through the words so you too can feel, see what I have or any of the other characters do.
Damned right I was at the party. The one, I mean, Eric and his sometimes-girlfriend Lina crashed. Or had Akemi invited him unbeknownst to me? The thing was in honor of her, more precisely the artists' circle to which she belonged, her friends, young up-and-coming painters, sculptors, performers, whatever they get up to. Sponsor was a wealthy dealer, gallery owner (you don't need to know these details but a little background doesn't hurt), setting a mansion just outside down, former estate of some prominent citizen, mayor way back or, hell, I don't know what, town cryer? (speaking of government).
Details. The gathering would run late and who wanted to drive back to the city in the wee hours? We were offered accommodations for the night, had a guest bedroom upstairs, bed with red drapes and real silk sheets. Akemi and friends received an award for the art collective where they worked and for the exhibition space there that showed their work and that of friends, outsiders who might otherwise not be seen in this country.
The party proper followed the ceremony. Akemi and I thought- I did at least- that the event would reinforce the good relations we'd enjoyed since our mini-vacation (there'd been dissent during it but, as I've said, all turned harmonious afterward).
She seemed for the time being to have forgotten about Sten, the Danish math teacher at the college who'd been courting her fairly openly. You may remember he and pals from his country wanted to include her in a film they were making about diversity in the U.S. Akemi the Japanese artist would star.
No word on that. Or on Eric either. Am I paranoid. It's not that she's open to other guys, hankering for them. Actually, they are for her and if you met her you'd know why.
She's the kind of woman she walks into a room and everything changes. Hollywood would be blown apart by her.
I expected peace at the party at least. But that wasn't to be. Damned right I nearly lost it when I saw Eric there. I confronted Akemi. She must, she really must have invited him. She tried to ease my concern but I pushed on, said I was leaving. She insisted she would go too. Up in our room with its drapes and the wine red, dark walnut bed, we started to change, get packed.
Akemi was in a fetching outfit half undressed, changing for the trip home, in a pair of purple maroon boy shorts, the kind with fringe edging that grips the tops of her thighs, ass cheeks and follows the crack of her ass closely like the membrane between an egg and its shell. Over that she wore a shawl top the same color, sheer. Through it you could pretty plainly see the boy shorts. Seeing me looking at her, my reaction, she changed her mind, sharpened, said the party was for her sake and her friends and she shouldn't just leave, that wouldn't be polite.
So there we were, one going and one staying after all, torn apart.
Eric and others were in a wood-paneled ante room on the first floor looking at something or playing some kind of game. She was going back down, she said. Well I'm not, I said. Suit yourself, Akemi sniffed- well not really sniffed. Akemi isn't someone who sniffs; I just can't find another word.
She finished getting dressed before going downstairs to join the party on her own. She thought for a moment, brief one- that the stripped-down look might be fine as is, it could be taken for a stylish party outfit, just pushing the envelope some, as they say. The shawl mostly covered her ass, after all. She looked annoyed by the decision of what to wear or what not, also at me for having messed with her mind- why'd I have to make an issue of Eric's presence at the gathering, as if I was accusing her of something! She grabbed a light silk jacket, muted pink, which sort of went with the maroon purple, but decided against it. The two colors, pink and purple, clashed, she thought. They looked great, the pink soft, like old satin, the purple dark, but she was right that the effect was bold, would make her stand out. God her legs looked good.
Even then, the visual mattered to Akemi, as an artist. How she appeared to others mattered. I said the jacket was fine (I wanted coverage). She shook her head, wouldn't make more than fleeting eye contact with me. Was still pissed.
Hanging around the bedroom would only irritate her further, and she hustled out before deciding what to wear, put the light jacket over her arm, apparently intent on making up her mind what to do with it on her way down the wide carved wood-banistered winding staircase to join the others or maybe when she reached them. I was upset too, as you can imagine. I'd said I was leaving her there! What, was I stupid?
We were both a little drunk. Through my anger anguish I saw both her determination and the momentary indecision she bore lightly. It went without saying that Eric would be happy to find Akemi by herself, free. Of course, he'd see a great opportunity. She was, after all, a delightful woman (again, wrong word, total understatement). My misery then would be that guy's delight.
My hope, of course, was Lina, the woman he'd arrived with. Would he shake her as easily as Akemi had me? My god, was that really what she'd done?
The bedroom door closed behind her softly (Akemi doesn't slam- I guess she shut the thing to give me some privacy). Silence fell, I had second thoughts. Staying here sulking won't help anything, I said to myself. You'll only make matters worse. This is the kind of moment where things can get really out of control. A man can lose a woman this way. You have to act. And I decided to go down after her.
I wasn't wearing a shirt. I too had stopped in the middle of changing back from party clothes to the more comfortable ones I'd brought for the overnight stay, and on the stairs down realized of course I was the only one there who was shirtless. Everybody had dressed up for the party. A group in the living room saw me descending step by step and looked surprised, pleased. Maybe they were bored, there was a lull in conversation, though they looked happy. "Ah, there's Mitchell!" one exclaimed with others. Eyes rose to regard me, faces like flowers turned up, open to the sun- something like that. Ha ha. The overall situation wasn't funny but I made the best of that moment.
"Yes," I ad-libbed. "It's summer." Explaining my shirtlessness. I was glad anyway to show my upper body, as I had been at the beach with Akemi. I exercised. Torso looked good. I saw it, wrongly or rightly, as another source of hope with Akemi. She might deny a man's body mattered much to her, but staying in shape couldn't hurt my cause. I continued, addressing the party audience. "We went to the Caribbean in winter and came back in summer." Of course that wasn't true. The season hadn't changed. We'd been in the city just four weeks. Everyone laughed.
I realized I had better be on my way. It was somewhat reassuring knowing that Eric probably couldn't fuck Akemi that night. We were at a party. But he might hope to get at least a kiss or maybe even a blow job. (Something about the way she smiles at him brings that to mind; well, it isn't really a smile, more a look of longing, her mouth open, lips parted anyway. I mean her tongue isn't quite hanging out. No, it's something in her eyes that I can't take when they're on him).
He definitely wouldn't be glad to see me enter the room but would try to hide his disappointment.
Akemi hid her feelings. I like to believe she was glad I'd decided to stay on after all.
Eric probably hoped to get a feel anyway, saw her as a wild animal, wanted to get his hand wet on the fur between her legs. I'm sorry. I couldn't look at the guy or at her looking at him.
When Akemi and I returned home the next day we made up. She stroked my cock with her thumb. Eric for his part wasn't done with her, almost certainly still had plans. They didn't matter for the moment. Harmony, when it comes, is an overwhelming force for good. Likewise, Akemi's beauty. It transcends all intrigue even as it creates its own. Who cared about anything that might jam the works in the future? News, whether personal, national international, interstellar, politics even the pandemic, receded far into the background, disappeared from our bedroom, was swept away on a cosmic wind. All coalesces for good in those charmed moments. Our discord incited us. She climbed on top cowgirl style turned away from me, teasing openly, reached her hand back to guide my cock into her and rocked and rocked. We felt- I think she did too- we were climbing a mountain with a crater at the top we'd fall into. She too came volcanically.
--
Akemi told Mitchell that at the party away from him she'd faced a problem. In the room with the open bar they'd stumbled into Eric and others cheerfully urged her to order another drink because this was a celebration of her art work and that of her friends. She didn't want more heavy alcohol, glass full of amber swirling liquid would slow her and bring a heavy feeling the next morning, so she dismissed the encouragement, cheerfully as it was offered.
"Well, you have to get something," someone said (not Eric; he wasn't pushing her as much as some others).
She wanted to just have water but thought that might make her look cheap, the bartender who depended on tips might get angry. She pictured his strong bony face showing resentment. He had the look of an aspiring actor manning the bar to earn a living until his big break came along; he was handsome, that is, his features strong and bared by a buzz cut, close to a crewcut really, almost a skinhead. He seemed eager to show off his good looks, as actors tend to.
Akemi decided to order a ginger ale, though she didn't like sweet drinks as Americans did. She'd noted that when one abstained from alcohol, ginger ale was what they usually got.
She did go down on Eric, just once, lightly, over, up and off, covering just the top, wetting it (no more possible under the circumstances, no privacy beyond the moment), and tamping her mouth daintily with the back of her wrist, only that for now, but giving him a view of what would follow, of paradise to come if he played his cards right, almost certainly would come. She liked him enough to do that, liked him a lot, and all he had to do was nothing, if he didn't out and out drop his cards the momentum already set would lead inevitably to ecstasy in the next few days.
Look at her pursed lips, her eyes open looking up to him, the angle giving them a mysterious glow of eastern or Oceanic statuary, eyes big like a puppy dog seeking approval, to be petted, to please. She was a woman, sophisticated, independent willful but now she was also that to him, and more.
Her wet, smoothed lip, top fuller at rest on the lower, showing her vulnerability, her self, her longing. How long did they stay there looking at each other that way? It felt like long minutes but had to have been only seconds. They had to go. Five minutes alone in the wood-paneled room when everyone had left, the video game had ended and other distraction called guests out to join the rest of the party. Five minutes alone to talk and then go silent and then this.
Akemi was wearing a rainbow-colored jacket that looked kind of funny on her. He wanted to help her off with it, touch her and help her up to her feet. But after what had happened it was as if they'd never touched and couldn't easily again. Shyness overcame them in a wave, even though he was still hard as rock- or the obsidian sculpture he had briefly glimpsed in her features- and she was, he felt sure, soaking wet.
They left the room together as if separate, exhausted by the heaviness of desire yet lighter than air, riding a current to the future. They barely had to walk. They glided.
No wonder Akemi was excited with Mitchell in bed later.
--
What did Eric and Akemi talk about? They talked about his parents. She asked. They must be pretty old, she said. Did they still work? Who took care of them? That was how people thought about parents in Japan, differently than Americans, who, she had come to understand, mostly thought just about themselves. Eric said he had a brother who still lived only blocks from home, had never ventured out into the world as he had.
Eric talked about baseball. He'd been on an amateur team in the town she and her husband visited in the Caribbean "We have that sport in Japan too," Akemi said. Eric, never at a loss for exploits to brag about, told her how good he felt while playing, running in the outfield, how free, described a great catch he'd made in his last game, catching up with a hard hit line drive after a long, all-out run. He said he'd felt good making that play in front of an audience. People in the stands and on the bench admired him, applauded.
He felt he was making another great play now, catching Akemi."
https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/شاي_لوف
https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/شون_فلين
https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/غارسيا_باور
https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/كريس_أوين
https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/لاله_منصور
https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/ملكة_جمال_الأرض
https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/ملكة_جمال_الأرض_2001
https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/مونيك_كولمان
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