A Promise of Intimacy

I watched her cautiously as she stepped out of the bathroom in a terry robe that she, of course, had with her. I noted how it seemed to hug every curve of her body, as if it were custom-made. She was thin, a lot thinner than what I’m used to, but I wasn’t about to complain. And, man, was she pretty! Not in a movie star kind of way, but sort of girl next door pretty. She told me her name was Lucy. And, I wondered what had driven someone like Lucy to end up doing what she does, what she was about to do with me.

         I then questioned my own reason for being there. Why am I here? Oh, right. It’s because I agreed to it. She had instructed me to take her to this motel room, and I didn’t object. Had I even hesitated? I couldn’t recall. Oh, but I should have.

         “Relax,” she said, smiling as she lit a cigarette. I noted the NO SMOKING symbol prominently displayed on the back of the motel room’s front door—directly above a shabbily illustrated sign that detailed the evacuation route one should take in case of emergencies—but I didn’t say anything. I was certain she knew smoking wasn’t allowed and had chosen to ignore it. She inhaled deeply then released the smoke coolly through pursed lips. I was sitting on the corner of the bed, not realizing how tightly I was grabbing onto its edge. She took another quick puff and exhaled. “Why don’t you take your tie off?”

         I loosened my tie but kept it on, certain its removal would hasten the proceedings of the evening. “Can we just talk for a bit?” I asked, my voice slightly shaky. “I just want to talk for a bit.”

         She shrugged and flashed me a practiced smile. “Of course,” she said, casually walking over to the bed to sit next to me. “What did you want to talk about?”

         I felt uneasy about her proximity—and with my enduring attraction to her—that I stood up and made my way to the window. From the motel room, I could clearly see the highway that was within a short distance of the motel, and I marveled at how many cars still traversed that length of road at that time of night. I was suddenly curious as to what time it was and brushed the question off as quickly as it came. It wasn’t important. I turned around to face her. “So, where are you from originally?” I said, a thin layer of anxiety lingered on the surface of my voice. “I mean, have you always lived here? In Seattle, I mean?”

         She gave me a look that practically screamed Are you kidding me? but she obliged my query anyway. “My family moved around a lot when I was a kid,” she said. “But, I was born in Sioux Falls. Lived there until I was about eight.”

         “South Dakota, right?”

         She nodded. “The one and only.”

         “I’ve always been good at geography,” I said with a tense chuckle. I walked over to the T.V. armoire, which was next to the bathroom door, and leaned against it, nonchalantly folding my arms. I thought I saw a momentary look of panic on Lucy’s face just then, but decided that I may have been projecting my own feelings of apprehension on to her.

         “Good to know,” she said. “My turn?”

         “Shoot,” I said.

         “What’s your wife’s name?” she asked, her left eyebrow rising slightly.

         I took a beat, and was at once agonizingly aware of the situation in which I had placed myself. As if on reflex, the pinky finger on my left hand started rubbing against the wedding band encircling the neighboring finger. It would be days later, during a painful moment of clarity, that I would acknowledge purposefully ignoring a tiny voice inside my head, pleading with me at that precise moment to get out of that motel room.

         She shot me a concerned look, and said, “I’m sorry. That was rude.”

         “No, no,” I said, holding my hands out in front of me, unsure as to why I felt the need to mollify her. “Virginia. Her name’s Virginia.”

         She smiled. “Pretty name,” she said. “How long have you two been married?”

         I let the question sink in, and I needlessly did the math in my head. I, of course, knew the answer right away but I allowed a fleeting confusion to seep in. Virginia and I have been together for nearly ten years, having met as freshmen at the University of Washington. It was, as the old adage went, love at first sight, and we remained as a couple even after our college lives concluded. We both immediately landed jobs in the city, enjoying an enviable lifestyle until a surprise pregnancy forced us to make things right by her deeply conservative father, and we got married before her condition got too obvious to ignore. That we would have twins right off the bat was the next surprise. Neither of us came from a family of twins so it was completely unexpected, and we were sorely unprepared to handle it both psychologically and emotionally.

         The birth of our twins affected Virginia more profoundly, with postnatal depression kicking in a few weeks after returning home from the hospital. She found a way to go back to work before the end of her maternity leave, and almost immediately slid into working long hours. In so doing, she had slowly distanced herself from our twins, affording them an almost perfunctory attention during what quickly turned into the minimal interactions she had with them.

         By default, I became the more present parent in our children’s young lives. Despite my own very busy workload—and almost without my having noticed—I had begun taking on both parental roles. At first, I didn’t mind. I loved my kids after all, and I would do anything for them. But, being practically the sole parent to the twins soon took its toll. I started to resent my wife, and I was convinced she was purposefully hiding behind her depression in an effort to shirk her parental responsibilities.

         The quintessential college sweethearts soon didn’t know how to be around each other, and we started going about our days almost mechanically. The twins celebrated their second birthday recently, and I was angry at Virginia for leaving the party just before the twins blew out their birthday cake candles. She cited work as the reason; I didn’t believe her. We fought a lot these days, and it had been a very long time since we made love.

         “Two years,” I finally said, “but, we’ve been together for almost ten. Our anniversary is actually next month.”

         “Congratulations,” she said, sliding up the bed so that she was leaning against the headboard. She kicked off the motel-provided slippers so that they landed carelessly to the floor on her side of the bed. “What are you going to get her?”

         I averted her gaze and scanned the motel room. By all accounts, I was in what I would easily describe, any other time, as a seedy motel room in a sketchy part of town. I knew what kinds of people places like this attracted, and never in a million years would I have lumped myself among that lot. But, I had already started to accept how I’d wound up in that motel room that night, ten miles from home, talking to an escort about my wife.

         I was lonely. And, in some ridiculous way, I looked to Lucy to remedy my situation. That my agreeing to meet her at the bar earlier that evening, a few blocks away from the motel, was almost fateful in an absurd sense, and I had hoped that she could sate my need for intimacy even if only briefly, transitory. “I’m not sure,” I said, letting my eyes wander to the window at the dark evening outside. “I truly don’t know.”

         “That’s fine,” she said, “don’t worry about that for now.” She gestured for me to join her in bed. “For tonight, it would be all about us, okay?”

         “Okay,” I responded almost involuntarily, nearly allowing my conscience to prevent the inevitability of the evening from unfolding. What’s one night? I reasoned with myself.

         “Now, you do understand that sex would cost more,” she said, and I suddenly could not recall having previously discussed the expenses related to her services. I, of course, knew she was an escort, which came with its customary expenditures, but the drastic shift in conversation about money threw me slightly off-kilter.

         “Yes, I understand,” I managed. Virginia wouldn’t have to know about this, my weakened scruples continued to assure me. And, I don’t owe her an explanation! She drove to me to this, didn’t she?

         “Good,” she said, and smiled at me in a manner that was devoid of any emotion.

         Just then, two men burst out of the bathroom behind me, and my body instantly went rigid from alarm. One of the men shoved me from behind, knocking me onto the floor on my hands and knees. Everything was happening so quickly, and I suddenly found myself face down on the dingy motel room carpet, my hands cuffed behind my back. “What’s happening?” I yelled, turning my head to see Lucy shaking the hand of the other man, who wore what I recognized then to be a Seattle Police Officer’s uniform.

         “You’re under arrest, moron,” said the officer who had straddled me. He removed my wallet from the back jeans pocket, stood up, and aided me upright. He sat me down on the bed while dutifully reciting what I knew to be the Miranda rights.

         I saw him hand my wallet over to Lucy as she removed her terry bathrobe, revealing underneath the tight, red dress she had donned at the bar earlier that evening. She stepped back into the pair of slippers that she discarded minutes ago, and stood over me, shaking her head. “It’s really too bad, Mr.--“ she said, pausing to look at my driver’s license. “Mr. Ramirez. You seem like a really nice guy.”

         My head was in a daze but I was cognizant of what was taking place. I was being arrested, that much I knew, but was this all a sting operation? I realized how ridiculous my line of thinking was. What did I know about sting operations anyway beyond what I’d seen on T.V.? But, was it truly improbable that I’d managed to get myself caught up in one tonight? It had been, up until that point, a series of firsts after all. Before that night, I would never have sought out the services of an escort or arranged to meet with her at a questionable watering hole which happened to be near a motel of even lesser repute—I was never that guy. With all the newness that had happened so far that evening, why wouldn’t I, therefore, also find myself embroiled in what was turning out to be an infinitely horrible situation?

         I looked up at the woman who had introduced herself as Lucy earlier in the evening at the bar. The attractive woman with whom I felt an instant connection the moment we shook hands. The woman who, mere minutes earlier, was someone with whom I was looking forward to spending an intimate evening before she turned out to be an undercover police officer. “What’s going to happen to me?” I asked.

         The woman who I knew as Lucy sat on the bed next to me, and I felt a pang over the gesture that was all too gentle just moments before. “You’ll be taken to the downtown precinct and processed.”

         “Am I going to jail?” I asked, almost in a whisper.

         “Yes, but just for the night. It’s only a misdemeanor so you should be released before noon, if all goes well.”

         “I can’t believe this is happening…”

         “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, buddy. That’s all there is to it,” she said, helping me to my feet and leading me out into the corridor. I saw several other men being escorted out of motel rooms by police officers. They, too, were obviously in the same boat as I. Flashes of light from what I assumed to be cameras accosted my eyes, and I squinted to minimize their effects. My mind refused to wonder what would happen if or once those photos became public, who would see them, and what the reactions would be.

         We arrived at one of the police cars that had, by then, littered the motel’s tiny parking lot, and she opened the passenger door. I awkwardly lowered myself inside, my handcuffed hands slowing my movements. The undercover police officer held the top of my head to prevent it from hitting the door frame. “Is your name even Lucy?”

         She shut the door and stooped to peer through the open window. “No, Mr. Ramirez. It’s not,” she said with a curt smile, before straightening herself and walking away.

         I watched the scene happening outside of the police car for another minute before I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. My wife’s face and those of my twins’ bounced rapidly around in my head, but the images were a bit out of focus, as if my brain rejected the need to make them real.

         I tried to imagine the events that would occur in the morning, when Virginia would ultimately have to collect me from the precinct. I attempted to conceive the conversation she would immediately demand to have in the car before pulling out of the precinct’s parking lot. A little movie began to play in my mind, and I proceeded to write the script of exactly what I would say. I decided that I would tell her everything.

         Fortunately, at some point, my mind refused to allow me to imagine anything more.



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