Within fifteen minutes Larry was in front of his hotel, in the city centre, and he casually walked in, with a hand in one pocket and his coat draped over the forearm, he greeted the receptionist and crossed to the elevator landing.
The elevator was humming and he watched the digits count down to zero. A young couple emerged arm in arm and laughing, they side stepped him with a whispered giggle. Larry entered the booth and ascended alone.
The doors had closed the lift was moving and he turned sideways to the mirror which covered the back wall. Larry took his hand out of his pocket. There was a diagonal bulge in his groin area. It wasn't difficult to see. In fact it was blatantly obvious. He pushed his free hand down into his slacks and rearranged his lump, so it wasn't lying at such an awkward angle. The bulge stood straight out, making a tent of his trousers. Larry approved and nodded to himself, then raised his eyebrows then checked his teeth in the mirror.
On the forth floor the car slowed down and stopped. Larry put his hand back in his pocket to press the erection flat. It was hot and unusually strong. A middle-aged man with a younger woman entered. Everyone nodded at each other and said nothing. The man leaned forward and pressed the top most button on the control panel, which had an embossed label "Sky Lounge Night Club".
Larry watched the woman in the periphery of his vision.
The couple's dress sense was oddly mismatched in a telling way. The man was corporate casual, he had that dress-down-friday appeal, with a Lacoste cardigan draped over his shoulders, a thin belt, beige slacks and those heeled moccasins with the false laces, that are gathered into a leather tasselled knot.
In contrast her clothes where painted on. Her face was made-up with an air of complete indifference, she had an emotionally detached tilt to her neck with long jet black hair pulled over one shoulder and she was flicking her phone. Her eyelids had a broad black ink stroke across the edge that curled up at the corner into a tick. A just-do-it tick, thought Larry. Her eyes were cold blue and profoundly bored.
"So ... that any good?" asked Larry pointing his nose at the glowing "Sky Lounge" button.
"I honestly dunno mate never been" said the man, his words were overlapped by the woman's voice. "Yes, is wicked place", she said.
There was an awkward smile from the man. A mortgage smile behind which lives: two promiscuous teenage daughters, a withered wife nursing a dead libido with ceramic classes and wanton neighbour who sun bathes in the nude has D-cup implants and hates his guts. Larry smiled at him then looked at the woman. She smiled too. Everyone was smiling, as you do with strangers in a confined space. Larry held the woman's gaze for a second longer than you aught too. She noticed his attention. Then with her watching him, he looked at her breasts, then down to her navel, and father down to the groin and then all the way up to her eyes, pale like glacial ice. Her eyes where quite the feature. In a different era she would've been burned for those eyes. Larry approved and he nodded.
She raised her neatly drawn eyebrow. She knew that Larry had figured her out her profession. She gave him a shrug and tilted her chin up at him.
Larry checked on the man.
The man was watching illuminated numbers above the door.
Then Larry looked at the woman again and directed her eyes down to his groin and revealed what was hiding behind his jacket. She looked at the tent in his lap, shifted her head to the other shoulder, glanced at her customer, who was still hypnotized, then back to Larry and then she blinked both eyes. It was slow and deliberate blink. A transactional blink. Just then the elevator began to slow down and stopped with a final jolt on the seventh floor.
"That's me" he said.
At exactly the same time the elevator doors slid open. There was a polite little panic as everyone immediately volunteered to pick the key up. It is the nice thing to do. Nice people do nice things don't they? The girl was very nimble, very quick and she got to the key card first. She picked it up and looked at the number. She tapped it against her palm a few times, and wagged it before she handed it back to Larry.
"C'ya later then" she said.
"Thank you, OK, c'ya" Larry said
"Have-a-good-un-mate" responded the man automatically and stepped forward to press a button as Larry left.
And the doors closed.