"The front desk called. Manager wanted to speak with you."

"Okay, I wanted to stop there to find out if I could get a massage." I toweled off from my shower and combed my hair. The pool had been just the thing I was looking for.

"I’m going down to the bar."

I dressed quickly, a button down and khakis. I didn’t need to shave. It felt good to have the chlorine rinsed clean from my hair.

"They have a real nice one."

"You want to come?"

"No," Adam was transfixed on his laptop. "I read about it in the brochure."

"Okay," I said. "How’s the presentation coming, are you satisfied with it yet?"

He shrugged.

"I know it has everything. I just can’t decide if it is in the proper order."

"We’ll if you get tired I’ll–"

"I’ll meet you down there a little later. It sounds like fun, they have a live–"

I gave a sort of half salute to indicate my desire to get going and exited.

I followed the carpeted hallways to the elevators. The elevators were empty. I read the advertisements for the bar and restaurant, for the new theme park that Adam had expressed an interest in.

"Can I help you with anything, sir?"

I stopped at the front desk and inquired about the health spa. The pool had returned a semblance of serenity to my skin, but the shock of yesterday and the public reading of today was not quite out of my system. The woman handed me a booklet listing various services available. The manager appeared at the office door.

"Good evening, Mr. Avellanos," she said.

"Jake," I replied and smiled.

"Jake," she repeated and advanced toward me crossing the barrier of the front desk. "Marsha Tansillon." She pointed to her badge. "Marsha."

"I’ll take care of Mr. Avellanos, thank you Sophie."

We walked to the other side of the foyer. I caught our image in the chrome columns that served as the foundation to the entranceway, a petite blond woman in a power suit walking beside a lanky dirty blond man in casuals. I spent my life in casuals.

"So you are interested in the spa services." She pointed to the booklet.

"I just was interested in a massage," I said. "The tension hasn’t quite left me."

"That makes sense."

"I had a public reading today in the courtyard and I just feel a need for some pampering."

"We can pamper you."

She took the booklet from my hands and opened it to the last page, a list of services.

"Just a massage? Would you like anything else?"

"No, that would really be about all I need. I went to the pool and found it to be absolutely fantastic."

She wrote down a message and a code and then signed the bottom. She handed the booklet back to me. We began walking back to the office. The instructions I expected began.

"When you go down to the parlor, whenever you go down, ask for Don Rodgers. He runs the place and I will talk to him tomorrow. Everything is on us. Get anything you like. Also, are you going to any…ah never mind, let me get them."

She went into her office. Sophie smiled at me. Marsha emerged with a small folder.

"I have prepared a small discount package for you," she said. "You came with someone, Adam Tracier, right?"

"Yes."

She opened the folder and pulled out a list of items.

"I have put together a small package, free passes to the theme parks, two hundred dollars of park money, a free round of golf with requisite rental equipment, and an extra card for another massage in case your still feeling that tension."

"Thank you," I didn’t know what to say. This all seemed quite absurd to me. But I knew what she was after.

"Jake," she paused. "I just wanted to extend my personal thanks on behalf of the hotel and the Fairgrounds for your help yesterday with the police investigation. It was really a terrible tragedy what happened."

Actually the elements of tragedy had nothing to do with it. We still didn’t know what had actually happened.

"Have you heard anything?"

"The police are looking into some leads. They may need you to look at some pictures or a lineup."

"That’s what they said. They have some leads?"

"Well, the Fairgrounds are very happy that you have been so discreet about everything."

"Actually the police made it quite plain that–"

"And we are hoping to get this resolved before the conventions are over."

"We’ll we can all hope for the best."

I wished her a goodnight and began heading toward the bar. I heard the clicking of her heels behind me and then my first name again.

"Yes, Marsha."

"I wanted to ask…you’re the first person," she paused. "The other convention began arriving today–"

"The swingers convention? Yes?"

"Is it a problem with the people in your group?"

"It’s odd scheduling, but I haven’t heard any complaints. We’re all adults."

My group? I guess it was nice to have a group. Having a name tag made me part of the group. I felt a warmth of comraderie whenever I saw another name tag. I didn’t know these people; I didn’t talk to them; but I felt I knew them all the same. Something in the knowledge of a name.

I passed the hallway near the pool. Yellow tape signified the area of my discovery. Two men in sports coats were standing in the exclusive area. Plain-clothes cops was my assumption. I walked briskly past the scene. I preferred the quiet civil tone of the manager on duty to the cacophonic choir of yesterday’s chaos.

Further on down the hall, an electronic bulletin caught my attention. It was a listing of tomorrow’s panels. It scrolled through its list of events in an orderly fashion organized by the blocks of scheduling time into which the day had been divided. It was comforting to see my workshop listed. Later in the week it listed Adam’s presentation.

I looked back down the hall and observed the corner that led to the scene.

I looked at my watch.

Barely twenty minutes had passed since I had left Adam in the room. I thought about calling him and demanding that he come down to the bar.

"Jake."

The voice came from behind me. I turned around.

"Hi," she said. Her voice poured forth from a red and black checkered jacket, white shirt, and a red miniskirt. The long tan legs stepped forward confidently in jet black heels. I remembered the comfort of a name.

"Liz," I said. I returned her smile.

"I hope you don’t need a name tag to remember me."

I admired her acknowledgement of her own unique qualities.

"How are you?" she asked. "I hope you weren’t thinking of standing in the hallway; they’ve got a great club here and the convention is having its party."

Where had she come from.

"I was just headed there. I got sidetracked looking at tomorrow’s events."

That was true. Don’t mention the other.

"Where is the professor tonight?"

"She wanted some quiet," Liz said. "She’s in the room working."

"Sounds like my roommate."

"Is he presenting tomorrow?"

"No, he’s a workaholic."

She looked at the electronic bulletin board.

"Have you been to the bar?"

"Yes," she said. "I was there last night after we left the pool. I was too keyed up to go to sleep so I went to the bar and read some of the short stories you gave me and some of your articles from last week."

I knew I turned red. I also knew I shouldn’t believe it even though she had told me she had read my stuff for years. She mentioned an interview I had just done with a fashion designer and quoted some lines from what she felt was an apt description of a rather coarse person.

"For once I felt like you put it in perspective," she said. "Without women buying into all that crap, the fashion industry wouldn’t have a job. I liked the way you focused the interview to get her to admit that. I don’t know if I speak for other women, but sometimes I get so sick of articles that tell me how I ‘feel’ about certain…ah, I’m babbling. Let’s go to the party."

She took my hand and turned on her high heel. I was being pulled along as though I was to be thrust unwillingly before some audience. How old was she? Twenty-something, right. Strong grip.

The multi-colored lights of the two-tiered club rebounded off of us and caught the accents in the dance floor. The crowd was a mixture of ages all from the conference I was attending. Some of them were still wearing their badges. The lights made her dazzle. Her white shirt was luminescent in the mechanical light. The beads of her jacket which I hadn’t noticed flashed and winked with her every movement.

A daiquiri for Liz and a domestic bottled beer for me got us started. I left the packet I’d received from the manager with the bartender. We moved through the crowd together. I talked to people in the war and crime sections to get a feel for the people Adam was presenting alongside. She talked to some of my fellow poets. We danced, with each other and with others with and without nametags. I was caught in the artificially produced heat of the lights mixed with the natural human body heat that hung thick in the air.

We returned to the bar for another round and ascended to the second level. Sliding glass windows offered a view of the artificial lakes that had been built by the theme park company. Some rented boats drifted serenely across the water. I watched the ephemeral multi-layered triangles they created. Across from us, on the other side of the lake, I saw the dancing searchlights of the resort park. The sky was clear and the stars were bright, but the view was framed and unlike the natural wide expanse I had observed from the pool. She took hold of my hand and led me out onto the terrace. We talked about her job some more, my job, our future interests, and mostly writing. We observed a couple in a rented boat kissing.

"Is the other convention here?"

She smiled.

"The swingers?"

"Yeah, the manager was questioning me about it earlier. Wondering if anyone had a ‘problem’ with the scheduling."

"Everyone here is quite open-minded," she said, and then revised. "Well, actually I think if anyone has a problem they keep it to themselves, do their work and plan to leave early. They put those people in a whole other section of the hotel. There’s a good chance that we won’t even see them unless we go looking for them. The hotel is divided in two, has two of everything. The restaurant, bar and the facilities are all duplicated on the other side."

"Really?"

"Yeah," she said. "I was reading the lit on this place before we came down and apparently it was so popular that it was always jammed pack. So they expanded it and later had to add a second of everything to accommodate the large numbers of people."

"With all the hotels–"

"It’s cheaper than one of the genuine theme park company hotels. The Fairgrounds is a cool hotel, but it doesn’t have a theme, no access to the monorail, no visits by the cartoon characters, no nightly shows. But it’s the best one outside the park and it’s the closest."

"I didn’t know that."

She smiled and leaned up against me. I put my arm around her and the boat with the couple passed a second time. I wondered if they were part of our conference.

"Probably," she said. "Want to go see where the swingers are?"

The walk through the hotel was long. I hadn’t realized before that my experience had been limited to half of the establishment. The other side had appeared to me to be another hotel. I stopped at my room to drop off the packet. Adam was absent.

We continued on our voyeuristic journey to the grounds which mirrored the pool complex on our side. Their pool and tennis courts were empty. I heard nothing. My self-consciousness was rising.

"Are you sure you know wh–"

"Of course," she said. "Come on, it’s the opening night of Eden."

"Eden," I repeated.

"No, that’s later," she said. "Tonight’s an anticipation of the big bang."

"Bang."

I followed.

She stopped and motioned for me to listen. I heard a mixture of voices diluted by the air. I heard laughter. We walked back toward the tennis courts. In a small forest planted near the tennis courts we huddled behind a tree. From there we had a view of the festivities. They seemed tame compared to our convention’s own party. The grassy field was illuminated by bright spotlights that were just coming on. It was a small group that was slowly growing in size. There was a table that offered oddly shaped cakes and punch. I saw a display of sex aides, but at that distance I could only make out the large variety of dildos they offered. Some of the women drank from glass phalluses and some of the men seemed to have shorter glasses that they cupped with both their hands.

A woman took center stage and read off some announcements through a rather impotent microphone. I could only hear some of them. A costume party was to be held later in the week, something about AIDS health forms, an invocation to Eden, and a general welcome were among the items I heard.

I didn’t know what I expected. Perhaps something Twainian: Welcome to Eden: Gates open at 8:30: "Fucking and Sucking to begin promptly at 9:00."

But it was later than that and the turnout was still undetermined as people kept trickling in. Slowly the festivities seemed to get underway. The small PA system introduced music to the scene, dancing that was mildly suggestive began, a limbo was started, and some members beat a path to the pool. Most of the members seemed to be engaged in conversation, unconcerned with what was around them.

Liz and I leaned against each other shrouded in the darkness. I questioned why we were there. How had I ended up behind a tree watching this plain scene in a small grassy meadow.

Then groups began to form in various sections of the field. As new people came that crowd seemed to have a growing sense of its identity. Two people would recognize each other and the feeling of familiarity would sweep through the collection of strangers gathered on the grass. The veterans were obvious and it was not too soon before I realized the difference between our party and theirs. We went back to our rooms. They didn’t.

"Isn’t it amazing," Liz said.

"What?"

"That they can just do that? I mean without feeling self conscious."

The majority stayed conservative. The exceptions engaged in acts I normally thought of as private. I felt strange standing under the rustling of the trees with Liz increasingly pressed up against me. It was wrong to watch. It was dirty to watch. But we had to watch. We’d come on this journey and we had to watch it.

Drew Giorgi can be contacted at stanpec0202@yahoo.com.