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The next day he took the old truck into Faro. He went to
breakfast at the best hotel in town. The waitress was very pretty,
pleasant and efficient. When he had finished eating, he asked
her if he might speak with a manager.
“What is it you wish, so you might speak with the proper
manager?” she inquired.
He told her about his idea to throw a large party and he was
wondering who did catering, decorations, that sort of thing and
he hoped that a hotel manager might know these things.
“I finish my duty in half an hour, have some more coffee and
I will take you to meet the best caterer in all Portugal.” That was
easy, he thought.
Fifteen minutes later they were walking down a narrow
street behind the hotel, past small older shops with interesting
items displayed in front of open, wide entries. Dana, his tour
guide, not his waitress now, was telling him about the local
leather and pottery and copper crafts trades. They stopped and
looked at all sorts of different items. She tried on a leather hat
and they laughed.
She took his hand and pulled him into the next shop. It was
quite different from the others. Everything in the shop was from
a previous century, or centuries. The old shop keeper looked
like he had been there since the swords and shields and helmets
had been commonly worn by the local knights shopping here.
When they entered the shop Dana released his hand which
made his hand feel empty, but she slipped her hand into his
again when they got deeper into the shop. It was a little spooky
looking, dark, cobwebbed. Great curved scimitars hung on the
aged walls from pegs. She pulled in closer, and pointed at scary
looking spears and spiked bronze maces. He picked up a helmet
and tried it on. She laughed. When they left the shop she
CASTLE IN THE WIND
73
dropped his hand again, they walked a little further, he reached
over, took her hand in his, she looked up at him. He held her
gaze for a moment, she smiled, gave his hand a squeeze, picked
up the pace a bit and they walked on, hand in hand.
They came to a small restaurant and Jesse had to duck to enter
the little doorway. There were four tables inside and a counter
where you could place orders. Dana obviously knew the lady
that came from the back kitchen and they spoke Portuguese so
rapidly there was no way Jesse could keep up. Dana took his
hand and pulled him back outside where she sat at one of the
tables on the sidewalk, Jesse joined her.
The older lady from the counter brought out tea, juice, and
some pastries, sat them down and left. A young girl brought a
pitcher of water and asked if she could get them anything else.
No? She was about to leave when Dana introduced Jesse to
Moina. “This is my friend, Senhor Jesse.” The young girl looked
him right straight in the eye for a beat too long for comfort,
smiled, extended her hand which he shook.
Holding eye contact, she said, “It is very nice to meet you. If
there is anything I can do for you, please let me know.” The
sparkly twinkle in her look, the slight blush in her cheeks and
the flirtatious toss of her hair as she turned to leave made him
wonder if she was referring to more than food and drink.
Dana shot him a quick cold glance that turned back to a huge
smile in a split second. “I think Senhor Jesse has much the way
with the girls, yes? It is not bad thing. Moina, she likes every rich,
handsome American men she meets, and Germans and
Finlands, Ahh, Papa!” Dana jumped from her seat when an
older man came from the restaurant toward their table. She gave
the very skinny older man a hug saying, “Papa, meet Senhor
Jesse. He is giving a big party at the Castelo and he wishes to
have the best foods and dancing and pretty girls serving rich
peoples and he wants to hire you to handle everything.” Well,
that was one way to put it.
WILL KESTER
74
Papa joined them as Jesse explained what he had in mind,
somewhat differently from Dana’s version, but not much
different. She had nailed what he had in mind better than he had
it in mind.
Little sample dishes of all sorts of different foods arrived, one
at a time, as patrons came and went. Wine and cheese were
followed by more little plates of dates and onions, then shrimp
and fish. It went on for hours as he and Dana talked and Papa
joined them and left and returned. Moina flitted and flirted and
the sun moved across the sky as Jesse’s party took on a sense of
reality.
A man came by and joined them who would be able to handle
the music arrangements. He would provide the “most finest
orchestras in all Portugal.” He was maestro in many countries
and knew all the best musicians and “it would be very best party
in all Jesse’s lives,” leaving Jesse to wonder if the old man was
referring to past lives, probably not.
Eventually they said goodbye to Papa and Moina who gave
him a smack right on his unprepared mouth. They left in a taxi
that seemed to magically appear as they were saying their
goodbyes.
Jesse was beginning to notice that things just seemed to
happen without everything being discussed or at least
discussed with him. He was also noticing that his opinion of
Portuguese women being slightly cool and not especially
beautiful was changing also. Dana was very much the tour
guide as they passed various areas of the town, hotels,
government buildings, and the less congested area as they
began to leave Faro behind. Jesse started to ask where they were
going several times but the truth was that he didn’t care. He was
having a great time and it didn’t matter where they went next.
The small taxi forced him and Dana to sit quite close in the
back seat. She didn’t hold his hand but she touched it to get his
attention as she gestured to the sights. As he seemed to relax and
go with the tour she began to touch his shoulder or his knee and
CASTLE IN THE WIND
75
then his hand again. He did the same as he sought out things to
inquire about. He got up the nerve to touch her knee as he found
something worthy of getting her attention. She grabbed his
hand just as it touched her knee, Jesse almost jerked his hand
back but she clasped it hard against her knee. She leaned her
shoulder into his and gave him something like a hug. Still
holding his hand, but easing the grip enough to allow some
circulation, she pulled their knees together and gave him
another sort of hug with her knees, squeezing his hand
somehow further up and further around her leg than he
remembered having put it. She held the leg squeeze a few
moments, released it, laid her head against his shoulder and
asked, “Are you having a good time?”
“Oh yeah, I’m definitely having a good time.” He could have
sworn he heard her giggle, maybe not.
The taxi had reached a remote tourist spot, “A natural
amphitheater,” Dana explained. There were cars parked on a
bare area and some busses. The taxi pulled up to an entrance and
let them out. Jesse tried to pay the taxi driver who insisted that
he would wait. They entered, bought tickets, found their way to
a crudely carved stone seat with no back which made leaning
against each other more comfortable, and much more pleasant.
The performance was a re-enactment of the history of the
struggle between the Moors and the Portuguese and the
Spanish. Dana would whisper in his ear explaining some of the
scenes to Jesse as the play developed. She would put her lips just
close enough to Jesse’s ear to not disturb the other people in the
audience and whisper just loud enough so he could hear what
she was saying. He could hear her but wasn’t thinking very
much about what she was saying. Her lips felt like butterfly
wings on his ear lobes. It tickled slightly but what was amazing
was that it tickled in places that had nothing to do with his ears.
When the play finished, the taxi was waiting close by and
pulled up in front for them. Dana, the tour guide, was
apparently off duty on the drive back. He actually saw some
WILL KESTER
76
things that he would have liked to ask about but Dana was
cuddled into his arm and chest so that he could smell her hair
and she seemed to be so comfortable and at peace that he hated
to disturb her. Actually he was afraid she would move away and
she felt so relaxed and soft and warm and…
Amazingly quickly, they were back to the hotel where this
day had started. The taxi driver asked where he should drop
them. Somewhere beyond the moon?
“This will be fine,” Jesse answered, not wanting to be
finished.
Dana seemed to be waking from a nap, she stretched to her
full height as she climbed out of the taxi, arms reaching straight
for the sky. She was probably about five foot five he guessed.
She dropped her hands to her sides, smiled up into his face, held
his eyes, reached up as if to hug him goodnight, placed her
hands on his shoulders, pulled herself closer in to him and his
head toward hers, tiptoed up to reach his lips and kissed him,
full warm lips, breasts pressed close to his chest, thighs
squeezed firmly against his, warm firm flesh. Her hands went to
the back of his neck as his hands hugged the small of her back
and pulled her in tighter.
Jesse heard the taxi pull away. He could feel the beat of her
heart and the pound of his own. He let her go reluctantly as she
pulled away slowly, smiled into his eyes and said, “I am glad to
have meet you, Senhor Jesse.”
She let the caress go but looked up at him. “I cannot wait to
see the famous Castelo.”
Ah, so that’s it
, Jesse thought. “When would you like to see it?”
he asked.
“Tonight?” she answered, a bright look in her eyes. The
surprise in his look must have been obvious. She laughed and
frowned at the same time. “You are shocked. Not the silly
Americans woman with the game playing that they teach in the
American’s magazine?” A devilish smile played around the
CASTLE IN THE WIND
77
edges of her sensuous mouth and eyes. She held his gaze
directly, challenging, intoxicating.
Jesse didn’t speak. He was afraid to speak; afraid he would
screw up the moment and the offer. As he made his decision and
looked for the words, she said, “I am needing some things.” She
grabbed his hand tightly and led him around the corner of the
hotel to a walk-up apartment.
He stood just inside the room with his back to the closed door
and watched her open and close drawers. She pulled back
ringed curtains to a small closet and grabbed items casually but
efficiently and placed them in a soft sided bag that was about the
size of his ex-wife’s purse.
“I am ready.” she said.
Me too, he thought.
As they were getting into the old delivery truck that Jesse was
a little embarrassed about but Dana didn’t seem to notice, he
said, “We have to work on the ‘Senhor Jesse’ thing.” She
bounced into the middle of the bench seat through the driver’s
side door she had opened before Jesse could get to the passenger
side door to open for her.
I guess I failed to lock it, he thought.
“What do you mean?” she looked at him and asked as she
made herself firmly placed where she meant to sit, allowing
Jesse just enough room to get in behind the wheel and squeeze
snugly up to her firm body close enough to feel the heat and the
energy exuding through the cloth of her pants.
“Uh, well, it’s, uh—” he was having trouble thinking. Not
true, he was thinking but he was thinking about a lot of things
that didn’t have to do with the question. She was looking up at
him waiting for an answer, her look saying ‘yes?’ “It’s the
‘Senhor’ thing. Could you maybe call me Jesse?”
“Sure, Jesse.” A huge smile from her brought a smile to his
face and a great warm swelling in his heart that pressed against
the inside of his chest as his heart pounded with something; lust,
love, desire, gratefulness, fear, anticipation, to be determined.
He started the truck and headed back to the castle. Eventually he
WILL KESTER
78
got his heart beat under control despite Dana placing her hand
on the inside of his leg much closer to his lap than his knee.
He might have missed the turn if Dana hadn’t pointed it out
to him just in time. She had talked along the way. “I was
swimming on the beach below the castle when I was little and I
am climbing the steep difficult climb up to the Castelo and
sneaking close enough to touch the fortress walls and dreaming
of being a princess in a great castle and running away before I
was caught. That was when I was little girl.”
Jesse stopped the truck in the middle of the bridge over the
moat and leaned out the window, checked to see if the moat was
filling up but more so that Dana could get the full effect. Not
Jesse’s best idea because she pulled away from him and leaned
out far enough to see the water and with a gleeful hint of a
squeak, “You have water under the bridge, from the mill, that is
working, with sort of a waterfall coming from the windmill,”
she had assessed it pretty well and quite quickly, by the
moonlight. Jesse was impressed.
He pulled up to the main entrance instead of the rear so that
she could get the full effect of the great stone stairs going up into
the courtyard. He wanted to show her the dungeon. If it was the
castle she was interested in, the castle it would be, the entire
castle, including his bedroom? There went the pounding heart
beat again.
Dana stepped into the great drawing room, took in the
fireplace and the piano. She crossed silently to the piano and
softly touched the lid with her fingertips and just barely brushed
the polished wood with a slight sensuous stroking motion,
seemingly unaware of the effect that her every move was
beginning to have on Jesse’s psyche, or his libido or whatever it
was. She seemed to float gently, softly, quietly through the room
to the great hallway and peered into the study. She looked back
at Jesse as if to ask permission to enter the next room. He waived
his permission to go where she wished. “Care for something to
drink?” he asked.
CASTLE IN THE WIND
79
“Later.” She went out onto the patio and looked at the pool,
walked out into the courtyard and around the pool, and circled
back into the study. Jesse kept watch from a distance and let her
take it all in as he took in the affect of the different lights on her
body. The reflection of the lighted pool made her skin seem like
pale polished marble. The warm lighting from the built-in
sconces of the “covered barbecue” patio that Jesse now,
probably incorrectly, called a portico, made her hair dance with
firelight. She returned through the study and then back through
the closer arched doorway from the drawing room, looked at
Jesse, straight into his eyes. He thought he saw a hint of a tear. In
an almost whisper she said, “It is beautiful, very beautiful, more
beautiful than I ever imagined.”
So are you
, he thought. For a moment, Jesse was both James
Bond and a small boy showing the little girl from down the
street his ‘fort’ he had made all by himself from scrap plywood
and cinder blocks.
You ain’t seen nothing yet, he thought.
Jesse took her hand and led her down the steps into the
dungeon. They reached the turn of the stairway, before she
could see around the corner and get the effect of what was his
favorite room, he stopped her, took her hands from here side
and lifted them to her eyes like blindfolds, left her standing at
the turn of the stairs, rushed across the room to the stereo,
popped
Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganinni CD
soundtrack of the movie
A Moment in Time into the player, put
an old
Frankenstein movie in the DVD, turned the TV volume to
mute, adjusted the light until the beat of the strobe was at its
slowest setting and the light from the recessed sconces and the
black lights didn’t overwhelm the light coming in from the pool,
as the music began and the movie on the big screen was starting
and the checks from the furniture were throbbing just right to
achieve the most magical, mystical effect he could get, he
bounded back up the stairs, took her hands from her eyes, held
his breath to stop his gasping for air and gently guided her
forward down the stairs.
WILL KESTER
80
He felt her body tense and he let her stop where she was. He
slowly moved away from her and watched her from the
distance, afraid to look at her face. He was about to have a stroke
wanting to know what her reaction was, watching from behind
and slightly off to her side, he couldn’t tell. Ever so slowly she
turned her head from side to side, not quite enough for him to
get a glimpse of her face, she turned left and gradually back to
the right, taking everything in. Jesse had finally allowed himself
to breathe, slow measured quiet breaths, his heart pumping
with excitement as he watched her.
Finally! She turned to face him, tears in her eyes, apparently
he had upset her. She started to speak, stopped, formed a word,
held it, stopped trying to speak, came toward him, pulled him
down toward her and made the previous kiss seem like a
friendly little peck. Wet tongues found each other, body parts
began to mesh into one, body parts began to swell and throb,
and then she pulled away, oops, sorry, but what did you expect?
She pulled away just enough to be able to walk and lead him
closer to the sofa. She continued to take in the room, seemed to
decide where they were going, pulled him down with her as she
positioned herself on the sofa in order to see the movie and the
glass to the swimming pool. Jesse was in between her legs and
on his knees with his head pulled into her breasts before he
knew what was happening. He didn’t mind that he couldn’t see
what she was seeing. He was happy right where he was, thank
you.
She wasn’t large enough to smother him but plenty large
enough to be quite comfy. He didn’t actually kiss her breasts but
he allowed the pressure of her hands on the back of his neck to
gently push his lips against them, a little further with every
breath until his lips were much closer to the target than the little
bit her blouse allowed one to see of her cleavage. Just a little bit
of vacuum from an inhale through his mouth and a little nudge
to the right and a nipple popped out from under the barrier of
cloth, right into his mouth and against his tongue. Jesse froze for
CASTLE IN THE WIND
81
a second as she jerked ever so slightly, too much, too fast? She
moved just enough to let him have full access to her entire
breast; the material seemed to move out of the way as she shifted
her shoulder and relaxed into him. Better, much better. He could
taste the coppery blood fill the nipple as he gently and then not
so gently caressed it with his tongue, more and more flesh
gradually creeping into his mouth, nipple and tongue being
drawn ever deeper into the back of his mouth and almost the
entire breast filling his mouth, just about a perfect fit.
Almost inaudible moans began to mingle with the music. He
could hear, or feel them start deep inside her and make their
way to his ears as her pubic mound ground against his chest
almost in time with the music but not quite. He wanted to look
at her face, to see her eyes but he didn’t want to lose the
connection they had at the moment. Eventually, he let the nipple
slip from his mouth, tugged the cloth away to expose more and
then kissed her other breast for a moment before he raised his
eyes to hers.
Her eyes were like a wild animal but unfocused, staring in the
direction of the pool. Before they could focus on his eyes he
looked down, hooked his fingers in the stretch waistband of her
shorts and pulled downward until
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