Rendezvous: a hypertext adventure

by Nowick Gray

We awoke in the morning light, clinging together tightly. Faron was turned to face outward, and I, with the wall to my back, wrapped my arms around her from behind. Matt stirred from the upper bunk farther along the wall.

He crowed, "Good morning, Faron. And Will."

Faron took a deep breath; too deep. "Good morning."

"Hi," I said.

"Did you sleep well?" Matt had turned and was stretching half out of bed toward us, looking mainly at Faron.

"All right," she replied, "except for that crashing outside. I though a bear might be trying to get in."

"Yeah, me too," I chimed in.

"It must have been some of that old wood scrap blowing around out there," said Matt. "Say, who's on breakfast?"

Faron turned to look at me, smiling a silent query.

"Oh, I don't mind," I volunteered.

"No, I was just kidding," said Matt. "I'd be glad to do it." And with that, his long muscular body jumped out of bed, stark naked, onto the floor in front of Faron. She shrank back involuntarily at the sight, but kept facing him. Matt took pains to find the right clothing for the day's descent before putting anything on.

My own thin arms felt dead now around Faron's waist. She moved away, out of the covers and onto the floor, and bounced up and down in the cold air.

"Brrrr!" she blurted out, as Matt scanned the bounty of her body with admiring eyes. "Now let's see. What warm clothes can I wear today?" Her ample breasts jounced and swayed as she grabbed for her clothes.

Matt was taking his time with his own clothes, I noticed, as the show went on. Faron's legs were openly displayed as she stepped into her pants.

I turned my back on them and stared at the wall, breathing deeply. Suze poked her head around the partition between our bunks. Her cupid's head sported an impish grin.

"Look, Will, Matt has penis just like you!"

It had just flopped into his underpants as he tugged them on. Faron laughed.

"Well, not just like Will's," Faron couldn't resist saying. I looked at her sharply. She realized her indiscretion and clammed up, zipping her own pants tight. She looked to Matt.

He smiled casually. "That's right, Suze. That's because we're both men."

"Yeah," sang Suze. "Sometimes, Will puts his penis inside Faron . . ." Her eyes looked puzzled for a moment. "Could you do dat?"

Now Matt blushed. I waited for Faron to say no. Finally I couldn't stand the silence. "Come on, Suze," I said, jumping out of bed and picking her up, "let's get you dressed. Are you hungry?"

Matt seemed to have lost interest in clothing himself any further as he turned to the job of packing. I dressed quickly and started on breakfast. I lit the wood stove, cranked up the Coleman stove to boil water for porridge, ran outside for more water from the pond. My mind raced over images of the previous evening, trying to recall evidence of the apparent attraction between my wife--well, common law, anyway--and this friend--well, recent acquaintance. There was nothing I could put my finger on. . . . No, wait--I remembered Matt's off-color story about the guy in the hot tub at Columbiana who'd said the tubs didn't have wood liners because there would be too many orgasms--er, organisms. Oh, how Faron had laughed, as if she were having one right on the spot.

Did either of them have any real loyalty to me? I wondered. Well, Christ, there was the child, at least, to think about.

I dipped the bucket in the pond, trying to divine in that cold pool what I might see when I got back to the cabin. Faron and Matt hugging: an innocent, friendly, warming hug, I tried to tell myself. Wasn't that why they lingered in their embrace, for me to see--to excuse their secret desire by so exposing it?

Matt would still be shirtless. When they finally pulled apart after I crossed their threshold, I would of course notice the hefty bulge in his long-john trousers.

We would eat a desultory breakfast together. Then Faron's question would come: "When will we see you again, Matt?"

He would of course be delighted to answer, "As a matter of fact I've been hoping to get to Homewood ever since Will told me about it. It sounds like a pretty neat place. As for my plans, well, they've changed a bit, recently. I was going to go back to Vancouver with my friend Janet, but now her plans have changed, too, and she's going back alone. So maybe I will have a couple of weeks . . ."

And so it would go. Faron's inevitable response ("Oh, you should come stay with us for a while, and have a long enough visit so we can really get to know each other") was practically audible to my burning ears as I mounted the steps with the sloshing bucket, wondering whether I should knock first. I heard the sound of quick, shuffling bodies inside . . .

DREAMBOX--To return to cabin Press