All the Pretty Girls

Forty-One

“Dear God, Elle, you have to stop. I need to get on the road and get home. My wife’s going to kill me if I don’t make it back soon.” In response, the brunette just smiled and slid lower down his body. He felt the warmth of her mouth, and the dark head started bobbing up and down, harder and more rhythmically, in his lap. He lost himself for the moment. Why not get off one more time before he headed back into the frigid world he called a family? He couldn’t remember the last time his wife had been in the position Elle was in. The brief thought of Quinn on her knees was enough to push him over the edge. Elle jerked back in response, giving him a dirty look.

“Sorry, Elle, I lost track. I apologize,” he said to her back as she went to the bathroom to wash out her mouth. Women, he thought, can’t do anything right with them.

He zipped his pants and stood, stretching to nearly six foot four. He glanced in the mirror and saw that his sandy-blond hair was mussed. He ran his fingers through it to smooth it down and caught the sadness in his eyes. He couldn’t identify the exact moment that being in a hotel room with a virtual stranger was a better alternative to being at home with his wife and their two kids, but somewhere, somehow, that had become the norm. He’d finish a trip but not want to go home. He would find himself lingering over the end of a presentation with a sales rep here, or accepting a dinner invitation from a marketing department head there, and his serial promiscuity had begun.

It was fun for a while. It was nice to have a woman fawn all over him, even if he was the boss and deep down he knew what they were looking for. But after Quinn had discovered the proverbial lipstick on his collar, except it was on a pair of boxer shorts, any hope of reconciling with his wife left him. They stayed in the same house, raised their children, but didn’t speak a word to each other than what was necessary for civility or pretense.

He wished he could undo things, make it right with his wife. If he could just go back to that moment that things went south. Quinn had shared a secret that had floored him. He had not reacted well, and she had simply shut him down. He tried to get her to see reason, that he was only surprised, not repelled, but she was having nothing of it. So his enforced exile had begun, and before he could stop it, it was too late. His marriage was done.

His companion came out of the bathroom and struggled back into her skintight clothes. She slid a zipper up her left side, fluffed out her hair and stood looking at him expectantly. He started to say something to her, anything, but he couldn’t get the words out. He was just too damn tired. He’d been on the road for weeks, traveling all over the Southeast, and dammit, he wanted to go home to his wife.

Elle stood there a moment longer and realized her ephemeral lover was not going to profess true love and offer to sweep her off her feet and into his BMW-clad wheels. She stomped haughtily from the room and he breathed a sigh of relief. Oh well. She wasn’t the right type anyway. There would be others. In the meantime, he had time to catch a shower, load up the car, have a beer or two in the hotel bar, then make his way back to Nashville.

The BMW stood in the shadows, out of the soda vapor lights that dominated the parking lot of the hotel. Without the keys it was harder, but it was not a huge problem. Checking to make sure no one was watching, he slipped open the driver’s-side door and pulled the latch for the trunk. He walked quickly to the back of the car and lifted the trunk lid open silently. The cavernous space yawned at him and he smiled. Plenty of room.

He pulled up the carpeting and exposed a small hole meant for a spare tire. The spare was gone, he had taken it out months before to make room for all of the accumulating crap that accompanied him on his road trips. It made the perfect hiding spot. He placed the bag in the hole lovingly, then placed the carpet back over the spot. With a last look around, he walked to the edge of the parking lot where he’d left the girl. He reached down for her, amazed, as always, at how much they weighed when they were dead. It seemed they were as light as a feather when they were in his arms, but after they stopped breathing they became as heavy as lead. He swung the girl up and over his shoulder and staggered the last few feet to the trunk of the car. With a heave, he flopped her into the trunk, watching with a smile as her hair fanned itself perfectly around her pale face. He couldn’t have done that if he tried. It was faultless.

There. Now it was time to go home.