Rendezvous
Rendezvous
Dusty Miller
This Smashwords edition copyright 2014 Dusty Miller and Long Cool One Books
Design: J. Thornton
ISBN 978-0-9918999-6-8
The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. The author’s moral right has been asserted.
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Table of Contents
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
About the Author
Rendezvous
Dusty Miller
Scene One
Three weeks was a long time to wait. Heather couldn’t stop thinking about Braden. The temptation to whistle was a bit unusual, but she could suppress it. There was much to consider, some of it serious. She could only get away from the House so often. Too much and it would draw attention. Her body was drenched in sweat from exertion. They played basketball once a week. Fridays were the only thing she once had to look forward to, but not anymore.
It was possible that Braden was lying when he said that he had lived with a woman for a few years, and that the relationship had been over for a while. That could be a lie, or it might cover a multitude of sins. It would be one part of a much larger story. It could cover a wife and three kids. Heather had accepted those hazards as a matter of course. It was almost a part of the plan. Initially, it had all been taken into account under the risk column. To her, the risks were worth it…eminently so. At first, all she was looking for was sex.
Finding Braden was a lucky break. Heather wanted to live out her fantasy or at least give it a try. Everything had worked out unbelievably well. She and Braden had a wonderful time up north. Braden was everything she needed in the sexual sense. He was just the thing Heather was looking for.
Braden might be lying when he said he’d been tested for HIV six months ago. He might be lying when he said he was clean, no Hepatitis-C or anything like that. He said he had been celibate for the last eighteen months since he and his partner broke up. But somehow, knowing even the smallest thing about Braden had made the decision-making process more difficult, not easier. She had more facts to go on. She had more to lose. Maybe that was why it worked out the first time. She didn’t know anything about Braden, herself, or anything, really. She didn’t know any better. She didn’t even know if it would work that first time.
The other problem was social. All those people would be about at the trade show, for though Burlington was a small city by modern standards, it was big enough and Braden at least would know people, quite a few by the sound of it. She would be very much out of character and out of her depth.
One of the fears was that it might get a lot more complicated than it looked. That seemed to be happening. It was the classic honey trap, right out of the CIA or KGB training manual. That was sheer drama, of course. They were just two lonely people. She didn’t know much about the guy. Braden sold tractors and farm equipment in a town up north and he was going to be at a trade show in Burlington.
Heather had permission to be away for two days. There might be negative comments when she got back. She had waited until the last minute and her excuse sounded contrived to her own ears. An elderly uncle was sick. She’d carefully muddled the name of the old age home, and the local hospital, which by a stroke of fortune was in Scarborough. She had no idea of his doctor’s name.
She had muffed the phone number. The odds were that no one would check anyway. If Mother Superior or more likely her chief side-kick Sister Patricia did check, come up dry and ask a lot of questions, she could plead exhaustion, emotional upset or just a plain, every day, old-fashioned mistake. Lately she had feigned a couple of good headaches, not to get out of work but just to be alone with herself for a while. Heather figured on riding it out for the short term.
“Have a good weekend, Heather.” Sister Dorothy would snap off the lights before she even got halfway to the door, but that was okay with Heather.
Let me be invisible to them. Undoing her smock, she slung it over her shoulder and went looking for her locker and the showers. Their team had won the basketball game, and was leading St. Mary’s by ten points in the championship…it was all very exciting, of course, and the voices of the other women were loud and cheerful.
Nine minutes and she would be out of there. The key to the rental car, still on the lot, was in her pocket. A familiar thud of adrenal juices lit up her insides at the thought of Braden. She would be away from home, in a major city, where no one knew her and she could do what she liked. They would blend in, invisible in an anonymous crowd of strangers. Her heart pounded. She was going to Burlington. She was going to be naked for Braden within hours. Four or five hours, tops.
With the trade show a yearly thing, Braden had a hotel room reservation and knew a little about the place. He had also promised something in the way of a present. They’d talked for hours on the phone, almost every night for the last week, with her locked in her tiny bathroom or away from the convent. She was becoming a bit paranoid. But that intimacy was revelation to Heather. It was unbelievable, to feel safe in confiding her most hidden emotions in someone. It was spiritual liberation, to have a friend of that intimacy. To say she had poured her heart out would be understatement, and she had listened very much to him as well.
Braden was sincere, but just how strong those feelings were was one question, and where it might lead was another.
Heather visualized herself in Braden’s room, dressed in a filmy peignoir, wearing white lacy stockings with a garter belt, dangling emerald earrings...her nipples stood at full attention by this time, and she cast her thoughts to the shoe store she’d looked up online. The right shoes would be something else. The memory of how her feet looked, the graceful curves of her calves, wrapping up and around Braden’s big shoulders, making love beside the campfire, it was unforgettable. Just the way her legs framed the big hips of Braden and the intent look on his face. She could still feel Braden’s bristly chest on her inner thighs, the wet feel of Braden’s mouth on her pussy. The things he said, and more than anything the safe and cuddly feeling she got when nestled in Braden’s arms. A lot of the time, kissing and gazing were the only things going on.
Braden knew exactly what she needed. Over the last three weeks, she had tried desperately hard not to masturbate, not even be tempted. But it was no good. It was a lie. She thought of him, but she also thought of other men, when she did it.
Was it true, then? That almost any half-decent man would do?
One of the personal revelations was the fact that she needed love, and very, very badly.
Braden had a face full of character, although honestly, after three weeks, it was a bit hazy. Heather had no idea how things would go this time. When she decided to call Braden, for surely the choice was up to her, her mood lightened and she felt good about taking the plunge. She had no regrets about their time at the lake, only that it had ended and her fantasy was over. But it didn’t have to end. All she had to do was to take that fantasy and turn it into a new reality.
The logic was simple enough.
Familiarity might breed contempt, but she didn’t think so. Or, she could quit and never do it again. She could go back to the old way. She could go back to being alone
all the time. The trouble was, she didn’t want to, and so a weekend in Burlington it was to be.
She had about a three-hour drive ahead, but starting at this hour, traffic would be light until she got close to the Big Smoke. The night was dark, the road was clear and she had everything she needed in the rented silver Toyota truck she drove. After pulling over and changing out of the grey nun’s habit and into something mainstream but unremarkable, she went on, feeling like a whole new woman. The clothes were like a suit of armour or a whole new skin.
Heather could make the shoe store stop and still get to Burlington by one a.m. or so. She would buy something that looked good on sheer impulse. It was her birthday and she had been feeling a bit down lately.
You could get away with anything if you were prepared to lie about it. A bit of a blush and a stammer might be just the thing.
#
“Aw…shit.”
If the first part of her trip afforded a little too much time to think, coming in from the east and going through Toronto required her full attention. Her wandering thoughts and persistently racing heart subsided as she refocused. The lanes were many, the drivers fast and seemingly erratic until she had driven a ways. Ramps going off from both left and right sides of the road were unfamiliar to Heather. She was going from a town of a few thousand to one of four and half million, and that was a big difference.
Heather reached over and turned the radio down, as much as she liked Q107, which was apparently one of Toronto’s dominant rock stations. She wondered what a submissive one sounded like, but that was just being catty. She could still smile at herself, so things weren’t that bad. It was just the sheer speed and distraction, the complexity. Everything in life had been happening too fast lately.
That included Braden. That whole trip, after a lifetime of fantasizing and months of planning, their trip had happened almost on a whim. She still hadn’t fully integrated it. She thought about it endlessly, of course, and it still made her hot. Otherwise why do it again? Braden had no real rights, no matter what her fantasy said. Braden didn’t even have Heather’s phone number. It was blocked and protected. She could change her phone number or close down her internet accounts in a heartbeat and that would be it. No more contact. The choice was all hers.
The last time down here, twenty-something years ago, it was her mom and dad swapping the driving. They always planned to go through at four a.m. in a bid to beat traffic on the way to one Civil War battlefield after another. Half her childhood, it seemed, was spent in the back of a car, or traipsing across one boring national monument or another. Her old man loved the Civil War. Much of her youth was gone from memory. But that one was strong enough to persist.
The tension built in her neck and across the shoulders. She found a lane that seemed sedate and comfortable compared to the NASCAR drivers all around. It’s not like she hadn’t driven at speed before. The problem was that everyone was doing it and they all seemed a lot more comfortable with it than she was. A small red car dove across in front from the left, narrowly missing a large white one attempting to do the opposite after coming up fast from behind on the right.
“Shit. What the blazes…” The signs, hanging over the road on the reflective green boards, went by inexorably, one by one and in clumps of three and four, sometimes more.
The sheer reading along this stretch was like a screen-play. They sure jammed a lot of information into a very short space. It required interpretation, which was just what she didn’t have time for. She was looking for the 403. The map indicated she could actually miss it and still have a dozen other options for getting there. There would be plenty of warning, the upcoming exit signs were in extreme overkill mode. The problem was that Braden had given her explicit directions and she preferred to nail it, rather than cruise the side streets of an unfamiliar town in the middle of the night looking to ask directions, or heaven forbid, stumbling across the actual motel.
“Holy!” A jet flew low overhead.
Through the inch or so gap on the driver’s window the rumble drowned out wind noise for a brief stint. Lights came down in the windshield, with the body of the machine angled slightly from the path of travel, by which a girl who admittedly knew nothing of flying sort of figured that there was a crosswind.
The big jets were getting much lower. On the right must be Pearson International, with its strobes, and beacons. She was halfway, maybe even a little more across Greater Toronto. The traffic, with adequate spaces between the cars and no white-knuckle guys in evidence for a change, had settled down into a high-speed, cross-town endurance run. On that notion, they suddenly backed up into a wall of flashing red tail lights and she slowed abruptly. She took up a position behind another car. The city lights, mostly industry by the buildings all around on this stretch, made her pulse quicken. Off in the distance the towers felt for the sky with probing fingers of light and the big one with the strobes over her left shoulder must be the CN Tower. The shape was right. It looked miles away, but the distance alone was impressive enough.
She was really doing it. This was the big city, and she surely was a hick. This brought a nervous grin, but the fear was nothing like meeting Braden last time. Now, at least, she had some idea of what was going to happen. It was the stress of driving. The traffic slowly picked up again, the cause of the slowdown still a complete mystery. With quick little glances at the road ahead, she made time to look outside the windows.
Life was short, and you only went around once; maybe twice if you were lucky. Heather wondered about the many men she had fantasized about over the years, in the biblical sense that was. Whatever would they think of her now? One or two of them might have been a little bolder…they might have enjoyed the rewards.
Who knows, they might be jealous of Braden.
Strange thoughts. She would soon be in Braden’s arms. They might hate her for unknowable reasons, or more likely, pity her and see her as an object of contempt. Funny thing was, she still liked them just fine. One or two of those men might have worked out, in another life, another existence. Nothing was impossible after all, and maybe she wouldn’t have been here doing this right now.
There it was, a sign that said 403 South. She wished her heart would just relax.
Mississauga, Oakville…Burlington.
Her turnoff couldn’t be more than fifteen or twenty minutes away. Checking the mirrors for lunatics, she settled in behind a brown courier van going the same way and tried to ignore a full bladder, not the best situation when the road had a slew of lateral cracks and the occasional borderline pothole.
#
The hotel was right where Braden said it would be. There was a big sign on a pole up by the road. Good so far. Heather hadn’t stayed in a hotel or motel for years and couldn’t quite remember the routine. She found a parking spot not too far from the lobby and hefted her two bags. Heather walked in on stiff legs, her head woozy from the hours of sitting and the fact of suddenly standing up and moving. The place was brightly lit. A woman in an elegant knitted dress in creamy yellow waited with eyebrows and facial expression carefully rendering a welcome, just like they would for any passing stranger with shirt, shoes and a credit card or any negotiable currency.
“Hi.”
“Hello. Welcome to the Wagon Wheel Inn. May I help you?”
She gratefully put the bags down and undid her coat a couple of buttons.
“Yes, thank you. I’m wondering if you have a Braden Mitchell staying here?”
“Oh, let me have a look. Is he expecting you?”
Heather believed he did, they had spoken on the phone four times over the last week and it was on as far as she knew.
“Yes.” Where she was getting all of this confidence was another question, but she was well-dressed and a perfect stranger in this burg.
#
Braden had reserved a room on the second floor, and had mentioned her name to the desk clerk. He also hadn’t arrived yet, which was a bit troubling but Heather had a few hundred dollars in
cash and the usual credit cards, a debit card with maybe two hundred in that account. Heather had been living on a small stipend from her teacher’s pay-cheque for so long she didn’t even really think about it anymore. The bulk of her earnings went to her House. The freedom her small inheritance had given her was a constantly-recurring revelation of sorts.
The lady searched a rack and came up with a key.
“Room two-thirty-four.”
It was up the elevator and down the hallway leading left, around one more turn and there she was.
Unlocking the door and snapping on the lights, the place was nice enough in a kind of Howard Johnson’s predictability. It was the first time she’d ever had that thought. Getting away from home was good for her. Even without Braden, getting out of town would have been a good thing, although what she would do alone in a place like Burlington eluded her for the moment.
Other than dress like a whore and try and pick someone up…the thought stirred her, almost uncomfortable in its intensity. She went to the window. Peeling the curtain back, she looked out hopefully, checking for Braden’s big vehicle. There was a good view of the street, anyway.
Heather put the first case up on the bed and unsnapped it. It was almost one in the morning and she would like a shower and some sleep, unless Braden turned up in the next hour, maybe even half-hour or so.
It had been years since Heather deviated from routine, or violated her set time for bed by more than a half hour. That routine helped keep her stable. It made life easier, and anyone could see the sense in that. It made it easier to go to work in the morning.