Edward Lee by Room 415

 

    ROOM 415

    Edward Lee

    When Flood saw the naked woman in the window, he froze. He stood poised as a mannequin in the dark, lit cigarette in hand. Excitement flashed, first in his heart, then his groin. It was the spontaneity, he knew, the total surprise. From this angle (Flood was on the fifth floor, the woman down on the fourth) he couldn’t see her face. Just a blur of shiny, ink-black hair, a flash of white breasts as she turned. Now she stood back to window; his eyes locked on the lines of her shoulders, waist, hips. A perfect snow-white rump. At first he thought she must be wearing a white bikini, until a maintained stare revealed stark tanlines. Another sun bunny, Flood thought. After that first second of reaction, he shrugged, uninterested. Why bother even looking? he told himself. What’s the point?
    But he kept looking anyway. Was it boredom? Or hope?
    A sheer, salmon-pink curtain billowed out the window. Flood’s eyes remained on the buttocks and its perfect cleft, yet peripheral detail indicated that she was talking to someone. To her right, an unmade bed. Flood rubbed his crotch through boxer shorts—who could see? It would at least be nice to get a look at the rest of her, he complained. God, nature, or the universe could be mockingly cruel. The only reason he’d risen from bed and come to the window at all was to smoke. His secretary had booked him a non-smoking room, so he puffed before his own open window. He’d turned the a/c off; as a Seattlite, warm breezes coming off the water were a luxurious novelty, and so were all the inordinately attractive women he’d seen thus far walking down the streets, sitting in bars, and even shopping in grocery stores in string bikinis. Bikinis here seemed as commonplace as frumpish denim ankle-skirts and flannel blouses were on women in the Northwest. Flood didn’t expect such a personal reaction. He’d traveled to cities all over the country whose women clearly outshone Seattle stock as far as looks were concerned. His boss, in fact, always bewailed sending him on these marketing trips, with comments like, “Sometimes it really sucks being the president of a big company, Jake.” “Why?” “Because I gotta stay here and run the show, and send you guys to all these fancy hotels full of gorgeous babes.”
    Babes, Flood thought now. It didn’t matter to him anymore.
    He stood a moment further, smelling the fresh salt air. He looked straight out and could see only a vast darkness that seemed incalculable, even monstrous. An interesting acknowledgment: he couldn’t see it but he knew it was there, the thousand-mile-long Gulf of Mexico.
    His cigarette sizzled down, an orange brand; he glanced again to the window. The initial rush of voyeur’s excitement had exited. Now the woman sat on the edge of the bed calmly fellating an apparent black man who stood before her with his slacks down. Flood noted that the slacks appeared to be high-quality, as did what appeared to be a black-silk shirt and black tie. Flood couldn’t see the man’s face. When Black Guy’s hips began to flinch, he pushed the woman down on the bed and straddled her, silently masturbating the final moment. The image raved. The woman’s mouth gaped a greedy ecstacy, stark-white breasts atop the luxuriant tan; Flood thought of Hostess Snowballs topped by pink bon-bons. He was surprised by the clarity of detail he was able to see. Black Guy ejaculated viscid loops across the breasts, then shook out the last line across her lips. She sat back up to slowly suck out the endmost drops.
    Another mindless rub to the crotch wrought no reaction. A masturbating voyeur’s dream, yet Flood didn’t care. His crotch felt comatose. What a rip-off, he thought to the sea.
    For lack of anything else, he lit another cigarette. He needn’t be to the conference hall till noon, so he could sleep late. Besides, he really did enjoy this secret existential luxury: being totally alone before the lightless face of