How’s a Midwest girl supposed to know which way it’s going?
THE TIDES
Terry Hayman
Copyright © 2011 Terry Hayman
Published by Fiero at Smashwords
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The Tides
Terry Hayman
So Bonnie stepped out, in her hot pink bikini, onto the long strip of sunny beach that ran up the ocean side of Lincoln City, Oregon, and thought: The tide goes out. The tide comes in. It’s awful hard for a Midwest gal to tell which way it’s going most times, but that ain’t no reason to just sit there.
And with that, she sashayed out along the sand until she finally saw the man to replace her last mistake. Bingo! She slipped off the shoulder-bag which held all her worldly possessions and let it drop to the sand. Then, with her best dancer’s grace, she bent straight from the waist to pick up a smooth skipping stone. She kept her toned legs straight and waved her tight tush in the sun and ocean breeze. After a slow breath, she brought her curly head of auburn hair up one vertebra at a time until her torso stuck out horizontal to the beach. She shifted her weight to her right foot, turned her left foot out, and swept that left leg high up behind her, balancing it with an arched back and raised chin.
This was her “gypsy ballerina” move. Or her “wild child” kick. Not that it mattered. The way her it made her butt clench and her boobs try to pop out of her bikini, the target never noticed the finer points.
She turned her face left, caught the guy’s stare through her wild curls, and smiled.
He sat on a towel a little further up from the surf. Maybe thirty-four? Clean cut. Fair haired. A little beak-nosed with a short scar over his left eyebrow, but handsome in a skinny, sun-starved kind of way. New-looking beach bag. New-looking bathing suit, bright green tee-shirt, towel, sunglasses. And all alone on this stretch of beach.
Bonnie guessed he’d driven out to Lincoln City spur of the moment. Work was shitty. Needed a break. Only realized after he checked into, like, the only unbooked hotel room in all of Lincoln City, that he’d better equip himself. Never knew what hot babe you might meet down on the beach, right?
So right.
“Hi!” she called. She swung down her foot, shook back her curls and arched her back a little.
“Hey,” the guy said.
“I’m Bonnie!” she called to him, not moving closer. Not yet. Never scare off your dinner ticket.
“Norm,” he answered, then touched his mouth. “Um...uh...Norman.”
She gave her musical laugh and stretched out her hand that held the stone towards him. She knew the swivel of her body, the light swing of her tits would keep his focus. “Wanna see a stone I just found?”
Make him come to you.
There was hesitation. Lot of guys were like that – stuck watching life, never committing. Norman nervously brushed his hand on his towel. “Uh...”
“Come on,” Bonnie said. “It’s a once upon a time kind of thing ‘cause I’m going to skip it!”
It broke his pattern. He blinked at her, looked past her to the steadily rolling waves of the pacific, and allowed himself a lopsided smile. He pushed himself up and scuffled towards her.
Something inside Bonnie sighed with a rush of pleasure when he stopped a foot away and it was all she could do not to throw her suntanned little body at him, wrap herself around his pale skin like a child round her mamma’s leg. But that eagerness was what had freaked her last mark. The guy had started looking around more, checking his Blackberry for messages all the time. He’d been about to declare his “business” trip over and drop her. Bonnie knew the signs.
So she’d dropped him first. Fucked him so hard last night that he slept like a corn truck hit him. That let her get up early and scoop all the cash from his wallet. She almost took the credit cards, Blackberry, watch, and wedding ring too, but she’d almost gone to jail once for pawning a watch and using stolen cards. And those Blackberries, iPhones and stuff—a guy told her how you could track them anywhere. Like they had homing beacons inside them and shit, and they caused cancer in your brain.
So she usually left with just cash, and not so much of that because the guys she picked mostly used plastic.
But cash had kept her going so far. Surfing the tides of life. That’s what she’d read in a magazine once that a girl could do. That’s what got her moving west. Of course she’d wanted Hollywood and said so, but the long-haul trucker who picked her up in a bar outside Omaha must have got his directions wrong.
Just so’s she got moving south before fall, she guessed it was okay. The tides, right? Like Norman here.
“So you want to throw it for me?” she asked him now, reaching out her hand, needing to make contact.
“Um. Uh.” He finally took the stone from her and flushed a little when he their fingers touched.
Bonnie quickly wrapped her arms under breasts, plumping them up for him, seeing his eyes receive the invite, the pupils dilate. She didn’t have to even look down to know his body got her, even if his mind was overthinking.
“Do you live here?” he asked.
“No.” Quick tinkling laugh. “Just got a couple days off. I’m with a dance troupe in Portland.”
“Oh? Which one? I live in Portland. I go to dance performances all the time.”
“You wouldn’t know us. We travel. A traveling dance troupe. Modern dance, you know?” She obviously couldn’t do the ballerina thing with him. He’d ask her what ballet piece? What role do you play? Or maybe – you’re not skinny like a real ballerina! But the modern dance thing, that was like an instant inspiration because she’d actually studied some modern dance back in Nebraska before her family went kaboom and she had to leave. Why hadn’t she used that before?
“Ah,” he said, looking at her funny.
“What about you?”
“I don’t dance.”
She snorted and pushed him gently with her finger. They walked together down to the water where the sand was wet and smooth and the waves ran across it in slow, long licks. Bonnie stood at his left side and felt her toes dig deep into the sand, the waves lick her ankles. Then, so suddenly it took her breath away, Um Uh Norman bent and snapped the skipping stone out across the water at a perfect angle.
It hit and sank.
Bonnie laughed without thinking and Norman shot her a black look. In desperation, she grabbed his face with both her hands and kissed him hard until his mouth opened and his body stepped into hers and relief flooded through her.
The tide was coming in.
~~~~
Four nights later, in the bedroom of a deluxe suite of Lincoln’s City’s best hotel, Bonnie lay nude on top of the tangle of sweaty sheets with Norman sleeping in the dark beside her, and wondered whether it was time to try to get him to take her south with him.
He had a good paying job in Portland, sure. Computer stuff. Smart analyzing of cisterns or something. Which Bonnie thought meant wine vats, but that would be in San Francisco, right? Which was California. So he could work there. And he liked movies and parties, he said. Which meant Hollywood.
But what mattered most was he was drunk with her now. Damn, for an older guy, he was doing her like three times a day. So much she’d started holding him off so he didn’t get tired of her too soon.
And she’d got him buying her things. And asking all about her dance troupe and her family, all the made-up stuff she’d used so often now it almost felt real to her. For her part, she’d learned not to touch him suddenly or ever ever make fun of him because he was real sensitive. Probably why he’d never settled down with a wife and kids. He hadn’t found a girl as good as Bonnie at reading men, who could give him what he needed so that she could get what she needed.
“On the news today,” Norman said suddenly and Bonnie almost jumped off the bed with a shriek, “there was a story about a serial killer who they think’s working his way down the Oregon coast.”
He rolled over to face her. The room curtains were open just enough so the moonlight made him look like a vampire. But not the sexy kind. More like the kind who’d rip her to pieces.
“You still awake?” she squeaked.
“They say the killer takes on different disguises and personas, making up entire backgrounds which he can share with others to fool them and put them at their ease.”
Was he really talking about her? Had she said something stupid that didn’t fit with something else she said? She racked her brains as she lay there with her breath stopped in her throat. She’d never done great in school. Never been good at much of anything but fucking and dancing, but she always thought she told a good story. Maybe it was only good when the guys she chose weren’t too smart. Norman was smart.
“You ever tell a falsehood to put people at their ease, Bonnie?”
He knew. Oh God, he knew...he knew...something. She was glad her back was to the window so he couldn’t see how her face was burning hot. Her lips were trembling.
“I...sometimes lie a little,” she said and she hated how high and tiny her voice sounded. She was usually so smooth. The way he’d acted totally in lust with her had knocked her off guard.
“How old are you?”
Twenty-one. “Eighteen.”
“That’s pretty young to be traveling with a professional dance troupe.”
“Um...no. Dancers are young.”
“And do you think they’ve fixed the venue problem you said your troupe ran into when they arrived in Portland?”