Wish Me Luck, The Sequel

"I met Barry at work. You probably know he works for a pharmaceutical and came to our office about once a month. After a couple of visits, he asked me out and treated me with respect. After several dates we had great sex a few times, then he invited me on this cruise. I thought it would just be him and I."

Wow, this is going to turn out to be interesting. I got out of the water and went back up and sat in my chair. Barry and one of his male friends were talking. They had gone up to the Tiki Bar and brought back a round of drinks. I saw Barry put some kind of powder in one of them. I had the sneaky suspicion that the drink was meant for Linda.

Some of their group was coming out of the water. Linda was one of them. She looked nervous. I wanted to tip her off but didn't know how. As she was walking back, she was looking over at me. I held my hand up as though I had a drink and shook my head in a no motion. She looked at me kind of query as she reached the rest of the group.

I heard her tell Judy when they were in the water, "Thanks for letting me know about Barry and the group. I will try and act normal until I can figure out what to do."

Barry handed her the drink with the mixture added and she looked over at me. I shook my head in a no motion again hoping she got the hint. She set her drink down and picked up her towel to dry off. When she finished drying off, she reached down when no one was paying attention and picked up another drink of the same kind. She looked over at me and we smiled at each other.

She went ahead and sipped the drink intended for someone else. One of the other girls had picked up her drink that was spiked with something. Barry and his buddy kept watching Linda for any signs of change.

About ten minutes later the other girl, Joy, was telling everyone how hot she was feeling. She put her hand between her legs and said she was tingling. She looked totally drunk as one of the other guys lay down on the blanket and started screwing her.

"You mother fucking son-of-a-bitch," Linda screamed at Barry. "You spiked my drink so all your friends could use me. Too bad Joy drank it by mistake. How could you do this to me? If I knew this was swinging with your friends, I would never have come. I hate you! Just stay away from me," yelled Linda as she ran crying from the beach to change her clothes.

"How could you do that to her, Barry? Why didn't you tell her the truth?" asked Judy.

"Where the fuck can she go? Marci couldn't make it and I needed someone to come along on the cruise. I knew Linda thought I was crazy about her and I figured she might go instead of Marci," remarked Barry.

"You're a slime ball, Barry. You knew if you told her the truth, she wouldn't have come. Then you were going to drug her and use her," replied Judy.

"What choices does she have? She's on a cruise and if she doesn't put out then she has no cabin to sleep in and no way home. I have her in a corner and she can't get out," laughed Barry. "She has to do what I tell her. I don't give a fuck what she thinks of me when we get back to Pennsylvania. Right now she'll have to do what I say."

"You make me sick," replied Judy. "Ben, I want no part of this. Let's just enjoy this cruise on our own."

Ben must have been Judy's boyfriend or husband. He just shook his head at Barry as he and Judy left for the changing room. The rest of the group didn't seem to have any problems with it at all. The guys were busy taking turns on Joy. I guess the rest of the group didn't really know Linda and could care less about her.

I had enough of the beach for now and stood up and went to change my clothes and see if I could find Linda and talk with her. I got to the changing area just as she was changing clothes. The vendor didn't think it was important to provide privacy for a nude beach, so I had a good look at her while she changed clothes. She really was a great looking woman. I hung back, not wanting to approach her while she was changing clothes. I also wanted to give her a chance to cool down before I talked to her.

I had to ask myself what I was trying to do. The answer was that I didn't have a clue. I felt bad for the woman - Linda I heard her called - and it wasn't right for a woman to be misled like that. I didn't see myself as some kind of Sir Galahad; I just wanted to see what I could do to help. There was a thought, lingering at the back of my mind the thought of the extra berth and plane ticket I had, unused.

By the time I'd changed my own clothes, the girl was gone. The only place she could go was to the small restaurant or to the taxi stand in front of it. I got to the restaurant just as the waiter put a Margarita on her table. The restaurant was open air -- some poles with a thatched roof and a half dozen tables sitting on the sand.

Part 3: Matt Meets Linda

When I walked into the place, Linda looked up from her drink, giving me a hard look, which relaxed a little as she saw I wasn't part of Barry's group. I walked up to her and asked, "Would you mind if I sat down next to you?"

She shrugged her shoulders so I pulled a chair out. The waiter looked at me and I pointed to a galvanized tub filled with Kalik beer in twenty-four ounce bottles. I'd never been to this beach but I had been to the Bahamas a couple of times. Kalik didn't export and had about half of the domestic market. When I could get it, it was my favorite beer. Mostly it was a mellow beer that seemed to take the edge off the sometimes harsh sun and generally made me feel kind of laid back.

She was studying me somewhat covertly. I let her look me over, let her get used to me being there. I was happy sitting there mellowing out on the Kalik. I had just held my empty bottle up and waved it for a replacement, when she finally spoke -- probably out of curiosity if nothing else.

"Who are you?"

"Well, my name is Matt and I'm on the same ship you are on. Look, I'll be straight with you. I wasn't trying to but I saw everything that happened at the beach over there." I waved my arm vaguely towards where we had been.

When she heard the word 'everything' she blushed, thinking of the implications of what that meant on a nude beach.

I continued, "You stumbled into a problem that's not of your own making and I can only see one way out."

I told her about my wife -- not the details, just what the result was. "Barry is not going to be discouraged easily. He thinks you are stuck in his cabin and beholden to him for your plane trip home. I know this is hard for you to accept, but I do have an extra bed -- they are bunk beds, really, a lower berth and an upper that folds out from above. I also have a plane ticket to Cincinnati. I think I heard someone say you and Barry flew down from Philadelphia. That's just a short hop from Cincinnati."

"Why are you doing this? You don't know me. What's in it for you? Are you expecting sex or something?" she asked.

"I saw what you were going through and thought maybe I could help. No one should have been misled the way you were. I don't want anything from you. I had the extra ticket and thought you could use it. I'm sorry if you think I'm interfering or want something from you. Maybe I should go. I'm sorry to have bothered you."

"Wait," she said. "I'm the one that should be sorry. You come here as my guardian angel and I bitch at you. It's just that it's hard for me to trust anyone at the moment. Surely you can understand?" she asked.

"Look, there isn't even a plane out of this place. Your only realistic alternative would be to charter a boat to Grand Bahama Island and take a plane out of Freeport. You are going to get killed on the plane ticket by flying at the last minute. Why don't you come take a look at the room and then we can go to lunch and you can get to know me. Unless you want to get sucked into what Barry wants you to do we have to get your luggage out of his room."

She looked pensive, and commented, "Well, I certainly agree with you on moving my bags." Suddenly decisive, she added, "Okay, let's do that. I'll move my bags to your room and then we'll go to lunch. I'm not even going to leave that SOB a note!"

We took a taxi right away and went to her room. The 'Please Clean' sign was on the door so the room hadn't been cleaned yet and it reeked of sex. Linda looked upset so I waited in the hallway while she gathered her belongings. I took her larger bag and we went up two levels to my room. The room was about the same size as Barry's but it seemed larger because of the single bed. There was room for a love seat and a chair. I didn't have a window because the interior rooms were a lot less expensive and I'd been trying to save money at the time.

I've always been neat and all my stuff was well organized. Sad to say my cabin did not reek of sex. I put her bags on my bed, "If you stay you can have the lower bunk. There is no graceful way for a woman to climb into the upper berth."

Linda looked at me and started laughing. "I honestly thought you were kidding about the bunk beds. I wanted to see how you got out of saying that when we got here. I'm not even going to ask why you got bunk beds."

She had such a pretty smile. It was good to see her laugh.

She looked around the room and at the bathroom and closet and nodded her head a couple of times. She surprised me as she took my arm as we went to lunch. I bit the bullet and told her the whole story about how I had cheated all those years ago and Lynn had waited to bail out.

Linda told me a little about her marriage and very briefly gave a hint at how things just never seemed to work out right for her. She gradually relaxed but looked tired from all the stress.

"Linda, why don't you go to the room and take a nap? Since the cabin was booked for two, they gave me two room keys." I gave one to her. "Let me grab my book and I'll go to a quiet place and read. It's two o'clock now. Why don't I come back at five? I'll knock before I come in. In fact, let's both do it that way if you do decide to stay."

She looked relieved at that and I went up to one of the quiet bars, and read my book and wondered if I was doing the right thing. I contacted the cruise director and notified him of the room change for Linda. He was a little worried at first but once I showed him that I had booked my room for two he had no problem with it. It fact he was happy about it.

I explained that Linda was misled on coming on this cruise and wanted nothing to do with the other occupant. I didn't tell him any particulars about the swinging situation or the happenings on the nude beach.

He told me domestic fights on a ship cause a lot of trouble and he could see a problem had been avoided and thanked me for it. He also mentioned that if there were any problems between Barry and Linda to contact him.

Now I just had to hope that she would agree to stay in the room.

I went back to the room after being gone most of the afternoon and knocked, like we had agreed to, but there was no answer. I knocked slightly louder; thinking that she was either asleep or she had gone out.

It turned out that she was neither. I heard the shower running so I walked up to the door of the bathroom and knocked again, this time hard so I could be heard over the shower noise. I heard the shower go off and Linda peeked her head out.

"Oh, Matt! I thought it was the woman that cleans the rooms. I, uh, I didn't bring any clothes in the bathroom -- there really wasn't enough space to change. Could you give me about ten minutes?"

"Sure, I'll walk around for a few minutes." I looked over at the lower bunk and I could see her clothes laid out. There was a pretty, yellow sundress and the bra and panties looked kind of, well, tiny. They were also yellow, paler than the dress, and slightly translucent.

I walked out to the deck, looking out at the ocean but seeing an image of how she would look in her yellow underwear. I was sure it was a sight that would warm the heart on a cold, lonely night. When I knocked at the room a few minutes later she opened the door at once.

"I'm sorry, Matt. I didn't mean to keep you out of the room for so long. But I slept so deeply I just couldn't wake up. Then when I did, I felt like I was still half asleep and I jumped in the shower. Matt ... I, I would like to stay with you, if it's okay with you."

With a wry frown, she added, "I don't have a lot of choices here and your offer seems like the best thing."

I just nodded my okay and didn't say anything. I did notice that she had unpacked already.

She was dressed in the clothes she laid out, pretty in yellow, but all I could think of was what she was wearing under the dress.

"Linda, let's go up and have a cocktail, okay?

At her nod, I led her out of the room. She again pleased me by taking my arm. We went to the piano bar where a young woman was playing an assortment of old standards: Tony Bennet, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney -- all the great stuff of years past.

I suggested that in keeping with the music we have Martinis. I watched the bartender make them; mostly because I wanted to be sure it was dry enough. That made me think of the old saw about the bartender that made the driest Martinis in the world: he put the vermouth bottle by the glass and let it sit there for about ten seconds with the lid off and then put the vermouth away. This guy knew what he was doing. I was surprised when, instead of a cheap bar gin, he used Bombay Sapphire.

I walked over to the piano player and asked her if she could play "The Look of Love," by Sergio Mendez and Brazil '66.

She smiled and answered, "Sure, that's one of my favorites."

She started playing an extended intro to the song and I walked back and asked Linda to dance. We started, kind of tentatively; we hadn't held each other before. The girl at the piano started singing:

"I can hardly wait to hold you, feel my arms around you, How long I have waited. Waited just to love you, now that I have found you, Don't ever go, you've got the look of love, it's on your face."

With that Linda melted into my arms. Her head was on my chest and I could see her face but she felt sad. The woman played several more, slow, romantic numbers without singing. I was getting ready to take Linda back to the table when the piano player started singing again. It was one of my all time favorites and one that always made me feel sad. It was Julie London's "Cry Me a River":

"Now you say you're lonely You cry the whole night through Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river I cried a river over you"

When the song finished we just stood there for a moment, with her leaning against me. She stepped back and kissed me firmly on the lips. Just as she finished, I felt the barest hint of her tongue slipping in.

Neither of us felt like finishing our drinks, so we went out to the deck and walked around, slowly, holding hands and looking at people. I had the oddest feeling, like I was a teenager again and bashful around girls. Later that night I almost killed someone.

It was after dinner and we were in the casino. I was playing blackjack, doing okay, and Linda was at a nearby slot machine doing quite well. At least it sounded that way from all the coins rattling down. All of a sudden, there was a commotion. I looked around and Barry had his hand on Linda's shoulder. From the way she looked, I could tell that it was hurting her.

I heard him say, "Nobody walks away from me, bitch! Come with me. You're are going back to my room with me," as I launched myself off my chair. A man in a security uniform neatly cut me off.

"I'll take care of this, sir."

He walked up behind Barry and quickly had his arm twisted behind his back and frog-stepped him out of the casino. I put my arms around Linda as she stood there, sobbing. A few minutes late, the cruise director came in and took us out on the deck.

"Since you talked to us, we have had security watching him. Tonight he was drunk and I think he'd taken some drugs. We run into that problem a lot -- people can get drugs much cheaper here than they can at home so they stock up and try to sneak it in. We have a strict 'no drug' policy and we will watch him closely. Tonight he has been warned that if he bothers this lady again he will be locked up until we get back to Miami." With a strong handshake, he bid us good night.

We decided we had had enough for the night so we went up to bed. It was our first night together and it was awkward. I tried to lighten things up by making a couple of jokes, but they fell flat. She was nervous and all I could do was to put her at ease.

We got through the night without any problems. She was wearing pajamas and I had on my boxers. I didn't even own any pajamas and always slept nude. I was sure once that I could hear her gently sobbing. I guess the whole thing had been very traumatic for her.

The next morning was better, although it seemed we were both trying too hard to avoid each other. The reality is that it was a small room and a small amount of touching and bumping was going to happen. It was an intimate situation. Try as we might there were going to be times where she would catch me with my boxers on or I would see her buttoning her blouse.

It got better over the next few days. She would let me kiss her on the deck, leaning against the railing, but not in the room. I sensed she was trying to decide something. I was unfailingly polite to her ... hell, that's the only way I knew how to act around a lady.

Linda didn't want to get off at any of the stops. I think she was afraid of Barry catching her alone somehow. So, we stayed on the ship, getting to know each other. We spent hours talking, exchanging our stories. We agreed that it didn't matter what we had done, whatever it was occurred in the past. It did influence who we were now but we weren't going let our individual histories weigh us down like an anchor.

We were getting more comfortable being with each other in the room. I guess she had accepted that I actually was a nice guy and that I wasn't going to do anything to her ... that she didn't want me to do. She was just putting her bra and panties on after taking a shower and then changing in the room. Once she was bending over to get a blouse from a drawer and as she stood and turned around I bumped into her. I had been walking over to close the upper berth so we would have more room.

We stood there for a frozen minute, chest to chest, staring at each other. She put her hands around my neck and pulled me into a quick passionate kiss. My hands were on her back and kind of on their own slipped down to her firm ass. I pulled her tight and she had to feel my quickly forming erection.

We stayed that way for a couple of minutes, both of us getting too excited. Finally she leaned back and whispered, "Wow! Where did that come from?"

I wasn't sure if she meant the kiss or my erection but I didn't think it made much difference. After that, when we were in the room, we would stop and hold each other ... sometimes with a kiss, sometimes not.

Each day we became closer until it seemed like I had known her for years. We explored all over the ship, enjoying the casino, having fun sitting by the pool chatting. Of an evening we took to going to the piano bar and enjoyed the music and dancing. The girl took to asking us for our favorites. The dancing I found a wonderful excuse to hold her in my arms.

We did run into Barry once in a while and he would quickly look around for security. Seeing they were always there, he would leave a room whenever we walked in. Judy did join us for dinner one night. She chatted with Linda and apologized for 'that asshole, Barry.' I danced with her a couple of times and after she left Linda and I agreed that the swinging lifestyle -- hell, any kind of swinging -- wasn't for us.