Hotel Photographer Pt. 04

Before leaving on the trip, I got a quick haircut. The barber gave a choppy one, which was fine, what I wanted, but when I got home I saw it was really uneven, as if the guy had barely paid attention, was thinking of the news on TV in his shop or something, rather than his work. I looked at my mop in the mirror and decided to comb it toward the front, dispense with the usual half-assed two thirds of the way to the side. Go with no part at all now. Why not? I wanted to look different for Akemi (Yeah, call me an idiot for imagining that would change anything). The result of my rough rearrangement gave a shaggy impression that actually looked good, I saw in the bathroom glass.


Akemi looked good no matter what she did with her hair, even if she put it on top of her head, especially then, come to think of it.


But next I remembered she'd once said she found guys with hair like that- down over their foreheads- scary. Maybe she just meant she didn't like the look, but why did she use the word "scary"? I explained bangs or whatever you call them were a usual thing in Europe. She said that looked all right on boys but on grown men it was scary. Could "scary" have meant "unattractive" in her language? I had no idea.


Of course her boyfriend was European. Sten came from Denmark. How the hell was his hair? I hadn't bothered to notice the few times I'd met the bastard (hell of a nice guy as Akemi was quick to assure me, which fact I had no cause to doubt, but still a bastard from my point of view).


I got up in the morning for work the last day before our hastily planned vacation. Really didn't feel like heading off to the job, dealing with the students, the whole rigamarole, being the leader, answering to their expectations, demands, but there was no escaping it. Someone had to make the money for our upkeep. I felt some resentment toward Akemi who would stay home and presumably head to her painting studio later. Why did I have to work and not she? I thought this was something to look at later.


In the meantime, she showed no compunction about living as she did with me. It was more likely me than she Akemi would take to task for wrongs in our days, though the balance was clearly skewed in her favor. She seemed to see no unfairness. Was that because she was Japanese? Was the man still expected to be the sole breadwinner in her country?


Was she really clueless, willfully dense, or protecting herself by refusing to concede ground to me? Was that how women were? It was the same thing I said to myself when I held her sleek hips in my hands while making love to her from behind, my cock on fire from the view, feel of that taut silk, watching those oval oblongs, her heart-shaped ass, my cock sailing through smooth wet. I thought then too, "This is how a woman is."


Bear in mind I'm conscious of how men- how I, that is- see women. There is a part of us- and we know which- that wants to dominate them. Good or bad, it's how things are, the way our DNA runs us. But we're an evolved species and can get beyond that. I know I try to.


A guy I was friends with, former colleague- he's since moved on- used to talk about a girlfriend he'd see once a week or so, former student of his at the college, from the Caribbean, black, as it happens, like Eric and others on that island (though Eric wasn't from there). Jeff would go to her place, stop in once a week or so when he took classes at the university she lived close to- he was finishing a masters course he needed in order to keep his job- and during the visits, in fulfillment of their one and only purpose, she'd give him a blowjob, and he called it "getting his oil changed." only in our conversations, I think. I doubt very much he said that to her- what was her name? Leticia, I think. Nothing wrong there. I also thought it a smart turn of phrase, but on reflection later I wondered. I mean, what if someone talked about Akemi that way.


Her attitude around the apartment was dismissive of any annoyance I might voice as I got ready for my commute. "I'm busy, have things of my own to attend," she said with looks that became sharp, even severe.


Sometimes I felt she would have liked to shoot me with a bb gun, would have if she'd had one handy, put black holes in my head, with a bb gun or something worse. Those black eyes of hers. Well, everyone has their moods. You can bank on it that I do.


In Akemi's culture the nape of the neck is singled out as a key element of a woman's beauty. The traditionalists, champions of their national heritage who pointed that out were onto something.


All in all, our trip was a good thing. Time to get away, change scenery, feel the sun together, stop thinking too much. (Akemi accused me of that, laughed as she said it).


But then we met the guy on the bus ride- which was surprisingly smooth given it was a country notoriously weak where infrastructure was concerned. They lavished care on tourists, without whose dollars the economy would collapse- COVID had been hard for them. We were on a four-lane highway, sailing high speed (as Akemi and I had in the hotel room) when the conversation started.


Smiling nice guy, the kind you don't feel is a stranger- though he is all the same, was. Akemi lapped up his friendliness. Go figure. I guess she figured she had my protection- not that she seemed to need it.


Things with Eric didn't develop as expected (and what was that?)


Remember his surprise visit to our room. Our day at the beach. All this is in parts one and two of this chronicle- which I'm not sure I can finish, at least not without it exploding in my hands, ha ha.


When I think of those days, when I remember them, I want to masturbate, because Akemi isn't here and she was such a turn-on, a tease. I wanted her no matter how rough things got for me through that season of fire. That short hot red dark orange few days that stretched into weeks as our love languished and revived. That's always how I saw it, still do, as fire season. Burning so you can't see through the flames, if there's anything beyond them, sky, water or just ashes. You look for pale blue past the grey. I'm using colorful language for emotional effect. Akemi's influence shows there. My living with a painter. One who happens to dance. We're talking about three dimensions here.


We met again at the upstairs hotel bar and while Akemi was off using the "powder room." Eric turned to me with a frank expression and said, "She looks to me like a woman who wants to be fucked by another guy."


"Come on. That's ridiculous. She's a-"


"Hear me out!" He was annoyed, not someone who likes being interrupted, dismissed.


I don't like it either, as I've told you.


We both quieted.


Then he cuffed my arm. "I'm joking. Because I can see you're a little worried. And who wouldn't be. I think it's all right."


I felt like punching him- not the first time a guy had pushed his buttons about Akemi.


"I mean that yellow bathing suit," Eric said with a slow smile.


"You remember that." She wasn't wearing it now, had changed into black slacks and grey top for the evening.


"Could anyone forget it?" Eric said, appealing to my pride as husband.


He and I had nothing else to talk about, nothing in common but our shared admiration of my wife.


Did he see the pain I suffered about her involvement with Sten before? They were over now- she promised- but the pain remained, only slightly dulled. Did it show in my face? Eric was joking, maybe trying to buddy up to me, admitting his response as a man to Akemi was a way to ingratiate himself with me so I wouldn't be quick to intrude or notice when he made a play for her. (change more accordingly; the whole sleuth proposal is a joke on his part- though he really did do detective camera work at the hotel for people checking on spouses they suspected of cheating.


"I have an idea," Eric said.


"About her availability?" I tried to laugh at his humor.


"It isn't that."


He looked disappointed. His mouth turned down at both corners.


"I'll text you about it later. There's no time now."


"Better talk in person. Now."


Don't ask why. I didn't know. That's how I ended up telling a near-stranger all about Sten stuff I hadn't mentioned even to those close to me, not to my brother Thomas, for instance (again, you'd have to read earlier chapters to fully understand). Stuff too painful to talk about with friend or family. About Sten and Akemi, my fear she was cheating.


Eric said, "I could have helped you then."


"How's that?"


"Hotel photographer's skills."


"I don't get it."


"What do you think a hotel photographer does?"


"Ahh."


He couldn't mean that.


He did.


He spelled it out.


"How do you think I pay for my lavish lifestyle?" He laughed. "You think I could afford jet skis on a salary?" We'd ridden on them in the afternoon. "People pay a lot for confidentiality."


"Do you charge on a sliding scale?"


"Anyway, you don't need my help anymore, right?" Eric cocked his eyebrow. Imagine someone with an old-fashioned monocle. His eye seemed exaggeratedly large, like it was looking at me through water. Yeah, fish-like he'd become.


Conveying his doubts that my wife's behavior no longer merited investigation.


Eric was ready to act as private detective to nail down any suspicions about Sten and Akemi that might remain.


Plenty did. I hadn't seen any reason to tell him. He must have sensed that from my eyes, heard it in my voice, knew in the way animals can smell human sweat.


"So I've seen women like Akemi," he explained persuasively. "I'll tail her for you for nothing."


He was ready, not to say eager.


His enthusiasm, not to say zealousness, made me pause.


"You're sure she's not still seeing him."


"Sten?"


Eric nodded quickly, sharply two times for emphasis. His face had turned serious though clearly he was enjoying this. Some kinds of enjoyment are deadly serious.


"You wouldn't know. I get it." Eric took my hesitation as a statement.


He freely interpreted the silence. Spared me the effort of elaborating. The "humiliation" might be a better word.


"That's right. Stuff you couldn't catch because- because she knows you." Here Eric gave his grin, which had by now become familiar, like something from a dream you wish you'd forget.


"She'd recognize you."


"Ha ha. If I tailed her, you mean! Of course she would." I still tried to laugh off his pitch. But my laughter rang hollow.


Eric, I realized, was encouraging me with his reminder I was still Akemi's husband no matter what else might be going on; all was not lost.


I became a blabbermouth, emotions tumbling inside me.


"They'd see me following them with a camera. Strange guy, they'd think!" I tried to make that sound funny. It wasn't.


"They would, right? I don't picture you putting on a disguise." Eric cut a laugh like a fart, joining in the humor, though he knew better.


"I'm not a stalker!" I blurted through my cocktail, ridiculous thing Akemi had recommended from drink list.


"That's what I'm talking about."


I fixed a sharp look at him, a warning. "Are you kidding about this or not. Because if you are-"


My threat had no teeth.


"I'm a professional stalker."


I felt my head moving from side to side. Gritting my teeth less in anger than at my own unwillingness to shut the conversation down.


"No charge," he said.


"Huh?"


"Forget the sliding scale." Grin again.


Speech slowly returned.


"You'd-"


"Because I feel for your situation. There's probably nothing to worry about, but a little reassurance, peace of mind I'm talking about." His eyes fixed on mine and I sensed he could see through to all my fears about Akemi and what she might be doing that I couldn't see.


"Reassurance," he repeated. And I thought he might pat my shoulder and that if he did I'd throw a punch.


What people paid him for, he meant. Only he'd work for free in this case. And why? Because he liked Akemi, wanted to see how she handled herself in bed?


"Well, it's too late."


He greeted this lie with the poker face, the blank eyes that reveal nothing and that you can't ignore.


"Hey think it over. If you want my services going forward-"


My turn to interrupt.


"You live here," I reminded him.


"I'll be in the city next week, as it happens."


He'd already thought this through.


We later found that Eric called the United States either "the mainland" or "the city," meaning the one where I lived, as if the Caribbean Island he called home for the moment at least were not a nation in its own right, nothing more than an afterthought, daub on a map.


Eric was American- North American, I mean. You know if you read the earlier stuff.


He proposed that astounding idea. He would be visiting the U.S. on a pleasure trip. He'd spent fifteen years- his childhood, youth- in our city and had a plan to see old friends. He would- "only if you're good with it"- put his photographic skills to use for my benefit then.


"Have to think it over." Repeating his own words to put him off. I couldn't believe I'd said even that much, not a straight out "no thanks" or "fuck off" even better.


"Hot. Wanting to be fucked," he said under his breath as we awaited Akemi's return to us.


He slammed my arm up by the shoulder as he had once before- and no I didn't punch him. He grinned, up close. "Where's your sense of humor!" I smelled whiskey on his breath. No doubt Akemi had too, had and would.


What was on hers? I not he would have that that night. I reminded myself of that. He hadn't gotten under the skin of our marriage, not really.


"Come on," I said again, signaling an end to the joke.


He wasn't done.


"You give her enough?" His eyebrows screwed. He slapped my knee. "Hey, it's funny. Funny!"


As I said, guy had a hell of an idea of fun.