The Ice Machine Witness

The ice machine on the second floor of the No-Tell Motel makes a sound like a dying lawnmower, and I’m standing next to it in my bare feet, holding a plastic bucket that’s cracked down one side. The carpet in the hallway is the color of a bruised plum, and there’s a light fixture flickering overhead that’s giving me a headache.

You’re leaning in the doorway of room 214, Spenser, watching me with that half-smirk you’ve had since the coffee shop. You know the one. It makes me feel like I’m a puzzle you’ve already solved.

“You’re going to stand out there all night, Stacey?”

I don’t answer right away. I’m listening to the ice machine wheeze, and I’m thinking about my husband’s face, and I’m thinking about the way Maria’s fingers felt against my wrist three hours ago when she told me to get in the car.

Maria is inside the room now. I can hear her humming something soft and unrecognizable. She’s probably sitting on the edge of that sad little bed with its polyester comforter, her blonde hair falling across her face, looking like a painting that got hung in the wrong building.

I met Maria at the library first, not the coffee shop. She was sitting in the biography section with a book about Georgia O’Keeffe open in her lap, and she looked up at me like I was the person she’d been waiting for all afternoon. That was three months ago. I told myself it was friendship. I told myself a lot of things.

“Stacey,” you say again, and your voice is lower now. You’re not smirking anymore.

I walk back to the room with my stupid cracked bucket, and you step aside to let me in, and the door clicks shut behind us.

The room smells like bleach and something muskier underneath, like the ghosts of a thousand bad decisions. Maria is sitting cross-legged on the bed closest to the window. She’s wearing a thin white tank top and jeans that are too big for her, and her collarbones catch the light from the parking lot outside. She’s twenty-one. She looks at me like I’m the answer to a question she’s been asking for years.

“You got ice,” she says, and her voice is teasing but gentle. She pats the bed beside her. “Come sit.”

I don’t sit. I stand near the dresser with my bucket of ice and I feel every one of my fifty years pressing down on my shoulders. My reddish-brown curls are frizzing in the humidity. My pale skin is flushed. I’m wearing a sundress I bought at Target last summer, and I’m suddenly aware of how thin the fabric is.

You move behind me, Spenser. I can feel the heat of you before you even touch me, and when your hands settle on my hips, I inhale sharply.

“She’s nervous,” you say to Maria, but you’re talking about me like I’m not in the room.

“She’s always nervous,” Maria says, and she unfolds herself from the bed and walks toward me. Her bare feet are silent on the carpet. “But she’s here.”

Maria stops in front of me. She’s taller than I am, thinner, all angles and pale skin and those impossibly blue eyes. She reaches up and tucks a curl behind my ear, and the gesture is so intimate that my knees nearly buckle.

“I remember the first time,” she says, and her voice is barely a whisper. “At the motel. Just us. You were shaking.”

“I’m shaking now,” I say, and it’s true.

You press your mouth against the back of my neck, Spenser, and I make a sound I’ve never made before. Your hands slide up my sides, fingers grazing the outline of my bra through the sundress. Maria watches, her lips slightly parted.

“We’ve been circling this for weeks,” Maria says. “All that jealousy. All those looks across the coffee shop. You watching me watch Spenser. Spenser watching you watch me.”

“I wasn’t—” I start, but Maria puts a finger to my lips.

“You were. We all were.”

She kisses me then, soft at first, just a brush of her mouth against mine. But then her hand slides into my hair and she pulls me closer, and the kiss deepens, and I taste the cheap white wine she must have drunk while I was getting ice. Her tongue flicks against my lower lip, and I open for her, and behind me you’re pressing your body against my back, and I’m caught between the two of you like a moth between panes of glass.

You pull the zipper of my sundress down. The sound is obscenely loud in the quiet room. The dress pools at my feet, and I’m standing in the No-Tell Motel in my bra and panties, both of them beige and practical and bought at a department store. I feel ridiculous.

Maria looks at me and shakes her head slowly. “God, look at you,” she breathes. “Those freckles. That skin.”

She unhooks my bra with practiced fingers, and my breasts fall free. I’m 36C, and gravity has been kind but not that kind, and I want to cover myself, but Maria grabs my wrists and holds them at my sides.

“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t you dare.”

You step around me, Spenser, and now you’re both looking at me, and I’m half-naked in a motel room with a man ten years younger than me and a woman barely older than my daughter would be, if I had a daughter. The thought should stop me. It doesn’t.

Maria drops to her knees.

I gasp before she even touches me. She hooks her fingers into the waistband of my panties and pulls them down slowly, letting the fabric drag against my thighs. I step out of them, and now I’m completely bare, and the air conditioning kicks on and goosebumps rise all over my pale skin.

“You’re so wet already,” Maria murmurs, and she’s looking at the dark curls between my legs, at the gleam of moisture there. She leans forward and presses her mouth against my inner thigh, and I grab your arm, Spenser, to keep from falling.

You’re still dressed. I’m suddenly furious about that.

“Take off your clothes,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel.

You raise an eyebrow but you comply, pulling your shirt over your head and unbuttoning your jeans. Your cock springs free, already hard, already leaking at the tip. I haven’t touched a man other than my husband in twenty-two years.

Maria’s tongue finds my clit.

I cry out, a sharp, broken sound that seems to echo off the cheap wood paneling. She licks me in slow, deliberate strokes, her hands gripping my thighs, her blonde hair brushing against my stomach. I’ve never—I mean, I have, with her, before, but not like this, not with you watching, not with your hand now wrapping around my breast and squeezing.

“She tastes good, doesn’t she?” you ask Maria, and your voice is rough.

Maria doesn’t answer with words. She slides two fingers inside me instead, curling them upward, and I buck against her face. The wet sounds of her mouth on my pussy fill the room, and I’m moaning now, I can’t stop moaning, and my hips are moving in circles I didn’t teach them.

“Fuck,” I whisper. “Fuck, Maria.”

You kiss me then, Spenser, hard and demanding, and I taste myself on your tongue from when you must have kissed Maria earlier. Your hand is still on my breast, thumb flicking my nipple, and Maria is eating me out like she’s been starving for weeks, and I’m going to come, I’m going to come right here standing up in this horrible motel room.

But Maria stops.

I nearly scream in frustration. She pulls back, her chin glistening, and looks up at me with those blue eyes.

“Not yet,” she says. “I want you on the bed.”

You lift me. I don’t know how, but you lift me and carry me to the bed, and Maria follows, and then we’re all tangled together on the polyester comforter. The ice bucket is still sitting on the dresser, melting.

Maria positions herself above my face, her knees on either side of my head. She’s taken off her tank top and jeans, and her small breasts are pale and perfect, her nipples pink and hard. Her pussy is bare, shaved smooth, and it’s hovering inches from my mouth.

“Your turn,” she says.

I reach up and pull her down onto my face.

She’s hot and wet and tastes like salt and something sweeter underneath. I lick into her the way she taught me that first night, the way that made her gasp and clutch the headboard. Above me, she moans, and I feel her thighs tremble against my cheeks.

You’re between my legs now, Spenser. I feel the head of your cock pressing against my entrance, and I tense for a moment—I haven’t had anyone but my husband in so long—and then you push inside.

I groan into Maria’s pussy.

You’re thicker than I expected, and you fill me completely, stretching me in a way that’s almost painful. You start to move, slow at first, then faster, and I’m trying to keep my focus on Maria but it’s so hard, it’s so fucking hard when you’re pounding into me like that.

“She’s so tight,” you say, and your voice is strained. “Jesus, Stacey.”

Maria leans forward, bracing herself against the headboard, and rocks her hips against my mouth. I suck her clit, flick it with my tongue, and she cries out, a high, desperate sound.

“Don’t stop,” she pants. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t—”

I don’t stop. I grab her ass with both hands and pull her harder against my face, and I’m drowning in her, in the taste and smell and sound of her, and you’re fucking me from behind now, you’ve flipped me somehow, and I’m on my hands and knees with my face still buried in Maria’s cunt.

You reach around and rub my clit with your thumb while you thrust into me, and the dual sensation is too much, it’s absolutely too much, and I feel my orgasm building like a wave far out at sea.

Maria comes first. She screams, actually screams, and her whole body convulses above me, and her wetness floods my mouth and chin. I swallow everything she gives me, and she collapses sideways onto the bed, breathing hard.

Now it’s just you and me.

You pull out and flip me onto my back, and then you’re inside me again, and I wrap my legs around your waist and pull you deeper. Your face is inches from mine. Your eyes are dark.

“Look at me,” you say. “I want you to look at me when you come.”

Maria is beside us, still catching her breath, but she reaches over and pinches my nipple, and that’s it, that’s the end of me. The wave crashes, and I come harder than I’ve ever come in my life. My pussy clenches around your cock, and I scream your name, Spenser, I scream it so loud that someone bangs on the wall from the next room.

You follow me over the edge. I feel you pulse inside me, feel the hot rush of your cum filling me, and you groan and bury your face in my neck.

We lie there for a long moment, all three of us, tangled and sweaty and breathing hard. The ice bucket has completely melted. A puddle of water is spreading across the dresser.

Maria props herself up on one elbow and looks at me. Her hair is a mess. Her cheeks are flushed.

“That was worth the wait,” she says.

I should laugh. I should say something witty. But I’m staring at the ceiling, at the water stain shaped like Florida, and something is cracking open inside my chest.

You roll off me and lie on your back, one arm thrown over your eyes. “Fuck,” you say, and it’s half a laugh, half an exhale.

I sit up. The room smells like sex now, overlaid on the bleach and the musk. My sundress is still on the floor. My beige bra is draped over the television.

I stand up and walk to the bathroom on unsteady legs. The fluorescent light flickers when I turn it on, and I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My makeup is smeared. My hair is a wild tangle of curls. My thighs are sticky.

I turn on the faucet and splash cold water on my face. It doesn’t help.

When I look up, Maria is standing behind me in the doorway. She’s wrapped the polyester comforter around her shoulders like a cape.

“Hey,” she says softly. “You okay?”

I open my mouth to say yes, of course, I’m fine, this was fun, let’s do it again sometime. But what comes out is a sob.

It surprises me as much as it surprises her. My shoulders shake. Tears spill down my cheeks and mix with the tap water still dripping from my chin.

Maria steps forward and puts a hand on my arm. “Stacey—”

“I don’t know what I’ve done,” I whisper. My voice is cracking. “I don’t know what I’ve done.”

She doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to say. I’m fifty years old, and I’m married, and I’m standing naked in a motel bathroom with a twenty-one-year-old girl wrapped in a comforter, and a forty-year-old man is lying in the bed behind her, and I just let him come inside me, and I loved every second of it, and I hate myself for loving it, and I want to do it again.

I press my palms against the bathroom counter and lower my head. The tears keep coming.

Maria rubs my back in slow circles. “It’s okay,” she says, but she doesn’t sound convinced. “It’s going to be okay.”

You appear in the doorway behind her, Spenser, pulling on your jeans. You look at me crying, and your expression flickers—confusion, then concern, then something that might be guilt.

“Stacey?” you say.

I shake my head. I can’t look at either of you.

The ice machine kicks on again down the hall, grinding and wheezing. Someone’s car alarm goes off in the parking lot. The No-Tell Motel continues its indifferent existence around us.

And I stand there, crying, wondering how the hell I’m going to walk back into my house tomorrow morning and kiss my husband on the cheek and pretend I’m the same woman who left to get groceries yesterday afternoon.

Because I’m not. I’m not the same woman at all.