Chapter 5

The next morning, Mélanie waited for Karine and Paul at the foot of the stairs with Sonny. A few minutes before the dining room was due to open, Karine stumbled down the stairs, still half asleep. As Mélanie had specified, she was nude. Judging from the stark white lines on her otherwise deeply tanned body, she had a habit of going to Montreal’s local beaches or possibly to a tanning salon while wearing the tiniest micro-bikini possible.

“ ... mornin’. Have you seen Paul? I knocked on his door but there was no answer.”

At that instant, Paul appeared in the doorway next to the registration desk. He had in his hands one of the inn’s towels, his hair was all wet and he had a most peaceful smile plastered all over his face. He was sporting the tan typical of the guy who preferred intellectual pursuits; the forearms and the calves darkened to a deep copper shade while the rest, from shoulders to knees, white as a sheet.

“Good Day, everybody! What a delight ... I woke up early and couldn’t resist the urge to go skinny-dipping in the lake. I even went as far as diving under the falls themselves. It shakes you every which way but what a rush! I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that for all the world.”

Mélanie smiled. “You see now why I love this place. Come, it’s time ... breakfast is served. You will see, the food is delicious – everything is made from local produce and prepared on site, even the bread.”

Sonny, proud of the fact that he was a big boy now, ran ahead to pick a table and, as serious as can be, went to get a booster chair from next to the closet. His mother helped him to center it and to spread out the chair’s napkin. When all was to his satisfaction, he allowed his mother to pick him up and seat him. Aelwen was this morning’s waitress; the girls traded off for alternate mornings and on Sundays, it was Mélanie’s turn. Mélanie also did her turn as waitress on each girl’s day off.

During the ample breakfast that did the local farmers proud, Mélanie, with important contributions by Sonny, recounted the inn’s history and how Sean O’Shaughnessy came to inherit it. They were on their last cups of coffee when Megan who, besides being the manager, was also Sean’s wife, came to greet her guests in perfect French. Mélanie introduced everyone.

When everyone had finished, Mélanie, knowing she would be quite busy with her guests for at least part of the day, proposed that they drop Sonny off at the day care centre for a few hours. She suggested that they bring along the seat napkins and to leave them in their rooms later on then took them all along the path to the Matheson Farm, next door.

When Big Bill Matheson sold his orchard to Sean, Sean had turned the old homestead into the welcome centre of the naturist resort under the management of Little Bill, Big Bill’s oldest son. Little Bill, who in spite of his nickname was a big galoot at around a meter ninety tall, now lived there with his family. One of the things that was added to the house was a large aquatic centre with movable walls that could be closed off for winter and both an outdoor and indoor wading pool. Karen, Little Bill’s wife, was a preschool teacher and had turned the inside wading pool and the large room next door into a day care centre for those parents who needed a few hours’ break from their darling rug-rats.

Paul was extremely interested in everything around him and was looking everywhere. He had taken note of what Mélanie had said the night before; after a quick look, he avoided looking too closely at the people passing by. After leaving Sonny with Karen, Mélanie had an idea and stopped at the resort’s desk to pick up some maps of the complex.

“Paul, I’m thinking that Karine is eager for the two of us to get together for some serious girl talk. Why don’t you take one of these maps and look around to your heart’s content.” She unfolded one of the maps. “I would suggest however that you come back by this path in a couple of hours; it courses through the maple grove and comes out near the lake behind the inn. That’s where Karine and I will be. You’re quite pale and the sun can be murder this time of year. I wouldn’t want you to have to stay indoors for the rest of the week-end.”

She walked through the aisles of the quickie-mart, grabbed a couple of small spray bottles of mosquito repellant and wrote up her purchases on the pad next to the cad register. “Here ... with the humidity we’ve been having, the mosquitos are really bad right now. You’ll need it.”

Back at the inn, Mélanie showed Karine the little room she shared with Sonny and, after grabbing a beach towel from her cupboard, led Karine to the beach behind the inn, where they found a spot in the shade to settle in.

As soon as she sat down on a convenient boulder, Karine started. “So, tell me everything! How did it come about that you ended up here?”

Mélanie proceeded to recount how the last months with Butch were from bad to worse and how, that last night, Butch had screamed at her and ended up by slapping her. She described how, early the next morning while Butch was still semi-comatose from all the booze, she had emptied his pockets, packed her diaper bag and, with Sonny in her arms, she had made her way to Butch’ garage and stole one of the wrecks to take to the road.

She told how, close by, the wreck had finally died and she had ended up in an orchard, breastfeeding Sonny when the woman owning the orchard found her and arranged to have her stay here and get her a job. She explained that the only black cloud had been the costume she was to wear for work. All her life, she had disdained the girls working in topless and nude bars, thinking they were no better than her aunt, a drugged-up prostitute but, after a long and frank discussion with Megan and a guest of the inn, had changed her mind. Nowadays, the only time she would get dressed was when she went down to Valleyfield with Megan or Heather O’Donnell, the woman from the orchard, on a shopping trip.

“Alright, it’s your turn ... talk to me about Roger, how you met up with him and who is this Paul you’re hanging out with?”

“Well ... that’s a whole complicated story ... You know me; always ready for a little horizontal mambo. As soon as I met a guy to my liking, I used to jump onto his lap ... and into his bed. At the time we knew each other at work, all those flings were but passing thrills. About a month after you left, I was in a bar alone drinking away my feelings of depression when Roger and Paul walked in; they had just been paid their bonuses and they had wanted to celebrate. Roger was a real hunk and Paul wasn’t bad either ... for a nerd.”

“It was funny how Paul blushed yesterday because you hit the bull’s eye. As I was saying, I was feeling lonely since you left and, just for the hell of it, I said – ... and why not – and decided to take both of them home with me.”

“I did both of them, one after the other while the other was watching. It was ... interesting ... but I didn’t feel I was ready to go whole hog and do them both together. And with the kind of life I was leading, there was no way I’d give either one a blowjob! I might be a slut but I’m careful; I always insist the guy wears a rubber. We ended up all three of us spooning all night. To be honest, that was even better than the sex ... I dunno – friendlier, like.”

“The next morning, I had to pee bad and I tried to crawl out of the puppy pile without waking the others but Paul followed me. We ended up in the kitchen, both of us still bare-naked, drinking coffee. Paul was really embarrassed but, in spite of that, made no move to hide himself or to cover up. I admit that I teased him a bit by flaunting myself in front of him,” said she with a little devilish smile.

“He confided in me that he had still been a virgin when we had done it and that he was sorry he had let himself go like that; he would have preferred that his first time had been otherwise. I told him that for me, it had also been the first time, doing two guys one after the other like that, I mean. We sat there telling each other our deepest secrets for about a half hour when Roger came up and joined us. I dunno, but it was like the atmosphere was for us to share our thoughts that morning, like. We spent most of the day naked in my flat just talking about real things without any pretense. That evening, we finally got dressed to go out and eat something. We didn’t want to let go of each other, like. As the weeks went by, we became friends and we used to go out regularly, the three of us. As I told you, Roger would really get me hot and several times, he would spend the night to scratch my itch. Paul knew about it but he swore to me that he wasn’t at all jealous.”