The First Word Blog

He lay in bed reading a book but found he couldn’t concentrate. The bath was taking a long time to fill and she was humming tuneless to herself as she was taking a pee. After what seemed an age the toilet finally flushed and moments later he heard her lowering herself inch by inch into the bath making tantalisingly suggestive noises. The water must be as hot as she could bear it and he imagined her face flushed and pink.  He found himself fantasising about her outrageously and he felt a little guilty about it.

The hotel room was very reasonable.  When he was told the hotel would be supplied by the company he was meeting with he had just been expecting a fairly featureless box in which to spend the night but instead had been pleasantly surprised by the extra quality of the room and the hotels friendly and efficient service. The one drawback it seemed was that the walls were not very well soundproofed. In fact it was true to say that you could hear everything.  He was surprised that he had voyeuristic feelings.  He had an overwhelming desire to see her but not be seen. 

A friend of his had recently bought a wireless CCTV camera detector that he now took on business trips.  He had laughed when his friend had told him this until his friend had told him the story of his colleague who had been enjoying herself with ‘a friend’ in what she thought was the privacy of her hotel room in China but had been secretly filmed by a miniature camera that had been concealed in the TV set.  This was bad enough but later the next day she had been most upset when, during a business meeting, a company representative, she had been negotiating with, started playing the footage on his laptop.   She had not realised it was her at first.  Needless to say her negotiations were somewhat compromised. 

It all went quiet except for the quiet drone of the extractor fan as she lay back in the hot water a while later her heard her sit up he heard and wash herself and then heard her getting out of the bath. He thought of her drying her body on the large fluffy white towel. He then supposed that she sat behind him in front of the mirror applying moisturiser to her body. He imagined her slowly massaging moisturiser all over. She was humming quietly what sounded like a lullaby. Once this task had been completed she was probably getting into her night things and then folding back the sheets and quilt and sliding between them into bed. She turned out the light straight away. He imagined she was warm and drowsy from the bath and ready to sleep.

They had checked in at the same time and had walked along the identical corridors looking for their rooms together. She had smiled at him as they pushed their key cards into their respective doors simultaneously and entered their rooms. He thought about her smile now and wondered about her. He couldn’t help looking at her when they had been looking for their rooms. She was wearing black figure hugging trousers and from what he could tell she had a body that looked firm and athletic.

He turned out his own light and was soon asleep. It was a several hours later that he heard  the muffled sounds of her crying. She was sobbing gently, probably into her pillow. Every now and then she would blow her nose. This went on for over an hour until he heard her pick up a glass and fill this with water in the bathroom. He then heard her talking to herself, though he could not make out the words.

He felt he wanted to talk to her but could not think of any excuse that he could possibly use to knock on her door.  How would she respond if he just called to her through the wall to ask her if everything was ok? That would give everything away and she would guess that he had been listening to her.  With these thoughts turning in his head he fell asleep.

In the morning he woke late and after a quick shower he dressed and left the room. As he walked past her room the cleaner was already in there and it was obvious that she had already checked out. He wondered for a while how he might possibly contact her.  Maybe the hotel reception would forward his business card to her or he could pursuade them to give him some information.  However, he knew that this was just one of those things and he would forget her in a few days and she would just be a woman in room 418.