Chapter 43

Monday evening, November 2nd

Janet (the studio’s publicist) met us at LaGuardia that night. She’d booked us in the Hyatt Grand, New York. Dani’s big ‘coming out’, I guess you’d call it, was Wednesday morning, on Good Morning America.

Dani and I were nervous as hell. Try to put yourselves in our shoes, having never been on TV before, much less the biggest morning show in the country. I was scared to death of saying the wrong thing, maybe inadvertently leading Robin Roberts, the show’s host, down the path of what had actually happened in my dreams, the sex, Alan Ryder. We both knew there was going to be a fine line between what we could say and didn’t dare. Thank God we had a day with Janet beforehand.

The Jacuzzi in our room was nice, inset in the floor right in front of the patio door overlooking the deck and New York skyline. Dani and I had gotten pretty familiar with the joys of a hot tub at home (yeah, read into that what you’re thinking – you’d be right), but this was something different, new and exciting.

Dani smiled at me, “You want to?” she asked.

I knew exactly what she meant, and hell yes, I did. It had never gotten old, watching Dani strip, it still turned me on, especially when her bra came off and she slipped those sexy panties down her legs, and she’d gotten so fucking good at being sexy, stripping. Even at forty-nine, she’d wow ‘em at any exotic dance club in the country.

I was already hard when we slipped in the tub, especially with the fact that the blind was still wide open and our lights on, and anyone who happened to be looking our way would be able to see. We sat side-by-side, looking straight out at that skyline. God, this little bit of exhibitionism was exhilarating, even though it was doubtful anyone would be watching. Still, though, there were other hotels and high-rises not that far away with windows that anyone could watch us from.

Dani wasn’t even trying to hide her tits, they were well above the hot, bubbling water. That, in itself, was a turn-on for me, and from the looks of her hard nipples, for her, too. We leaned back, closed our eyes, and Dani’s hand felt so fucking good, sliding up and down on my cock. Probably, just as good as my fingers rubbing her pussy lips were feeling to her.

Her slickness was feeling damn good to my fingers, too, imagining another part of my anatomy that it’d make feel even better (much, much better!). Dani leaned over, whispering, “I love you, can’t even tell you how much!”

I twisted my head a little and we kissed, a long, lingering kiss full of love, very quickly inflaming the senses, Dani compounding the situation with her squeezing hand. “I want you inside me,” she said, glancing outside at the deck.

Again, I knew what she was thinking, “A little cold out there, don’t you think?” especially, just getting out of the hot tub, but damn, the idea was enticing.

“But just inside the door wouldn’t be,” she said, climbing out of the tub, dripping water the few feet to the glass door, and leaning up against it. She looked back at me, gaping at her, still a little incredulous at my wife, “Well” she asked, “you want?”

Hell yes! It seemed to be my go-to brain function.

I got out, right behind her, both of us looking out at the big city. Dani spread her legs apart, I pressed two fingers inside her, and she moaned, “Oh yes ... now!”

I pulled my fingers out, gripped my hard dick, pointing it where my fingers had just been, and pushed...

And I was right; much, much better!

Dani let out a loud moan, her slick pussy took my breath away. We’d never done it this way, looking out over the city, where anyone could be watching. Probably not, but there were thousands of people, probably tens of thousands that would have a clear view of this patio door, especially with the bright light behind us contrasting with the dark outside.

Dani and I hadn’t done ‘it’ since ... hell, last night! It seemed like an eternity ago. And NEVER like this. My dick was up inside her, her tits mashed against the glass. We just savored for a moment, until Dani’s hips started moving back and forth, and I began thrusting, in and out, in and out, Dani’s moans getting louder. I wished ... wished... “Open the door,” I told her. I wanted someone, anyone to hear us, hear Dani’s wails, not that anyone would, but just the possibility...

We paused a moment, Dani pushed herself away from the glass, and I reached over, unlatched the door, pulling it open, all the way, The cold air hit us, the contrast between Dani’s hot pussy and the cold air making it seem even hotter than before. I didn’t know how cold it was, only that the forecast was a low of thirty-eight.

Dani rocked her hips, I thrust inside her, over and over, that indescribable feeling coming stronger and stronger. I did my best to hold it off, until Dani’s wailing changed, higher pitched, louder, and her pussy contracted, squeezing me. One final push, lifting her up on her toes, and I came, feeling like a volcanic explosion, like Mt St Helens must have felt when it exploded cubic miles of ash into the sky, destroying everything in its path.

And it went on ... and on ... and on! Dani screaming anew with each ejaculation ... or maybe it was continuous. Hell, I don’t even know, maybe the screams were me, at least some were, I know.

“Just be yourself,” Janet was telling us, “she’ll want to know about your waking up from the coma and how Dani came to call Amanda that morning. She won’t have a lot of time, there are only fifteen minutes scheduled, so you won’t be able to get into too much detail, but when you were telling me, I was fascinated. That’s what we want, just not the sex. If it starts to veer too much, I’ll interrupt and lead it back to safety.”

She told Dani it would be great to talk about knowing Alan in high school, even that he was her homecoming date, “Especially, that,” she reiterated.

We talked through most of the day, but Janet didn’t want us to ‘rehearse’ anything, “It’ll make it sound like it has been, and we don’t want that,” she said.

That evening, Janet took us to Times Square, she’d gotten tickets to a show at Radio City Music Hall, Mariah Carey. Dani and I were simply blown away! Between the Rockettes, Mariah Carey, other performers ... and that auditorium and stage ... just ... holy shit!

Talk about a way to get our minds off Good Morning America!

She dropped us off back at our hotel, telling us that she’d be in the lobby at seven, Wednesday. Our schedule is for eight-forty-five to nine, so we needed to be there by eight.

We were tired, it had been a long, exhausting day, but not TOO tired, if you know what I mean. Radio City Music Hall was incredible, but it took a back seat to our first half-hour in bed. I’d take that half-hour anytime.

Wednesday morning, Dani looked fabulous in the leather pants and lace blouse that Janet had left the day before. I say ‘fabulous’, what I really meant was very, very sexy in an elegant sort of way. And if people only knew what she was wearing under them!

We met Janet in the lobby, reassuring us both with a big smile and that ‘way’ that she has of calming nerves. She (actually, the studio) bought us breakfast, and it was a very pleasant, chit-chatty few minutes. Of course, she complimented Dani on how she looked. Me too, but I think it was just to be polite. I was just wearing a pair of slacks and a long-sleeved shirt, nothing out of the ordinary for me, maybe a little nicer than I typically wear to the store, but nothing like Dani was wearing.

Janet let us know that she’s been on GMA several times for various reasons, and that it’s been pretty low key, always a fun time for her. Yeah right, that’s her, not Dani and me.

We were in the GMA ‘green’ room half an hour early. Funny thing was, there’s nothing ‘green’ about it. It’s mostly brick and wood paneling, a beautiful room, not that Dani and I were noticing. They pointed out the little snacks; donuts, the Keurig coffee maker, and pods. Too bad that neither of us particularly likes coffee. Of course, they did have hot chocolate, so we tried that. They even had marshmallows.

Their producer, I guess he was, did everything he could to make us comfortable, and during a commercial break, Robin Roberts popped in for a couple minutes. She was friendly, smiling, giving each of us a short hug, and couldn’t have been more personable.

Yeah, I know I’m rambling, but I tend to do that when I’m nervous. Actually, scared shitless is probably a little more apt description.

Then this dude comes over, the same one who was trying to make us feel comfortable a little bit ago, “Five minutes,” he said, “and one thing Miss Roberts always asks her guests, please call her by her first name, it makes it so much more informal.”

I was thinking, informal or not, time to get the hell out of there, I don’t fucking wanna do this! Except my legs were too rubbery to run. The guy who’d been with us earlier led us to a little anteroom off the studio. What I hadn’t noticed before was a smaller room with couches.

And then we heard Robin Roberts, “Our next guests...” Her words faded out completely to me, our ‘guide’, I guess in want of a better term, directed us through the curtain, and Dani and I followed Janet out to be greeted by TV cameras and Robin Roberts. Whatever she said was lost to me, but I did understand her hand signals to sit on the couch, Dani closest to her, then me, then Janet.

The first thing she did, after a short introduction, was play a clip, the first time we’d seen any shot from the movie; Dani’s barrel race, then her elation as she jumped off the horse and ran into the arms of her ‘boyfriend’, Josh Brolin. God, that was incredible, it gave me the shakes just seeing it again

“That was really you, wasn’t it? Not a double?”

Dani chuckled, “Was me, the miracle of makeup,” she answered.

“But that ride, the barrel race, it looked like you’ve been doing that all your life, you’ve competed before?”

She shook her head, “No, that was a first for me, I was scared to death it’d go wrong. I had a great teacher and had been practicing almost every day for three months before that.”

“Wow,” she said, “that must have been exciting ... I understand you’re a teacher, that there’s a fantastic story behind how you got the part, can you tell us about that?”

Dani looked at me, took my hand and squeezed it. I had a pretty good idea what she was thinking. She looked back at Robin, “It started last October 27th, I was out to dinner with my best friend. When I got home, my husband ... Robert was on the bathroom floor, unconscious, he’d slipped in the shower...”

Dani wiped a tear, “He was in a coma for almost four months...” A long hesitation, “the doctors didn’t know if he’d ever wake up ... or how he’d be even if he did.” Then her smile reappeared, “And then ... last February nineteenth, the best day of my life ... he just woke up. I was reading by his bedside in the hospital with my best friend, Jenny, I thought I heard him say something ... and then he asked where we were...” and she was crying again.

Robin Roberts smiled at Dani, “That was a pretty emotional time for you, wasn’t it?”

“You have no idea,” Dani said, wiping her cheeks, “some things there just aren’t words for, that was one of them,” taking my hand and squeezing.

Then she turned to me, “What do you remember about that day? Do you know why that particular time? Why you woke up?”

“I don’t know why that day,” I answered, “but I know how it came about, I was dreaming ... and these dreams weren’t like any others I’ve ever had, they were all real ... or at least I thought so, and I remember them, virtually every one. We were giving a party, Dani, Jenny and her husband, along with several other people. I’d been feeling strange the entire party, like something was going to happen but I had no idea what. We were playing a game, I was blindfolded, one of the women told me to take off my blindfold. I did ... and everything was so strange, I wasn’t at the party anymore. The only ones in the room were Dani and Jenny, just sitting and reading. I was confused and asked where we were. And Dani burst into tears, yelling at her friend, Jenny that I was awake.”

“Wow,” she said, “that must have been incredible, I can’t even imagine ... but tell me, how did this movie thing come about? Was that part of your dreams in your coma?”

I nodded, remembering, hoping I could tell this without getting in trouble, “We were in Tampa, visiting an old high school friend of Dani’s, Alan Ryder, the football player. A friend stopped by, April, a makeup artist for a studio...”

Janet interrupted, “Artistre studio’s head makeup artist is named April.”

“And this is the Alan Ryder that’s one of the co-stars in the movie?” Robin asked.

I nodded, “It is, another of those weird ‘coincidences’. We’d never been in Tampa before, but when I woke up, I knew so much; about the Indian statue, Ulele, the water taxi, so many of the stores ... and about April. Anyway, April invited Dani to the studio that morning. Turned out they were shooting a commercial for a new lipstick, Rose Petal Peach, Winsome Naturals Cosmetics. Which, by the way, I learned after I woke up turned out to be a real cosmetic company and real lipstick, Dani’s favorite now, by the way. The model for the commercial didn’t show up, so April suggested Dani try doing the shoot, just for fun, since everything was there and ready.

“Turned out, she was really good. A couple days later they called her to do another. After that shoot, April told Dani how impressed the studio was. She suggested to her to call an agent. She gave her the name and phone number for Amanda Browning. She signed a contract, and Amanda suggested she audition for this movie the studio was having trouble finding the right actress for. She told Dani about the movie ... an audition was scheduled ... and then before it happened, I woke up.”

Like everyone else I’ve told parts of my dream, Robin Roberts was incredulous, “And all this turned out to be real? The names, the phone number, the movie?”

I nodded, “It did. I was afraid to tell Dani at first, I didn’t know it was anything more than a dream, except it just kept haunting me, dreaming about telling her night after night.”

She turned back to Dani, “And what did you think about all this?”

“I didn’t know, it seemed like every day, something from one of his dreams was coming true. But that one was just too much, no way was I going to call that number ... and then one morning when we’d gone to Reno, he was explaining it to this guy we’d just met, Mark, and he dialed the number Robert gave him ... and it turned out to be this agent, Amanda Browning...”

“Wow, unbelievable! So, you ... did you think you could act? Did you have any experience, any reason to think you could do something like that?”

I was watching Dani, her eyes rolling up in her head, “I was in a high school play thirty years ago, but when my husband knew about a movie he couldn’t have known about, he knew this agent’s name he couldn’t have known about, and he even knew her phone number that he couldn’t have known ... what was I supposed to do? She called the studio and they invited me for the audition. We went,” she shrugged her shoulders, “I know, it was impossible, but here we are...”

“This movie’s rated ‘R’, I understand there are some scenes that are ... a bit risqué. Is that going to be a little hard for you to see ... and have you seen them yet?” she asked me.

That was the kind of question that I’d been afraid of. I didn’t have any idea how to answer it, other than ‘no, I hadn’t seen them yet’.

But Janet jumped in, “No one outside the production crew has seen any of the scenes, other than the short clip you showed. I haven’t even seen anything else yet.”

“But,” Robin asked again, “is it something you’re worried about?” Then, when she realized I wasn’t answering, turned to Dani again, “What was it like, I’m sure the women who will watch this would love to know what a teacher thought about doing certain scenes with a handsome star?”

Dani looked at Janet for help, then when Janet started to open her mouth, Dani answered, “It was ... exciting ... that’s all I’m going to say.”

She turned to me, “What about you, watching your wife with another man...?”

I was ready for this. “My wife sat beside me for four months in a little hospital room. When all the doctors had lost hope, she was still there, just brief breaks by her friend, Jenny. She doesn’t have anything to prove to me that she loves me. There isn’t a movie scene or anything else that’s ever going to replace that image in my mind.”

There were a few more minutes of polite back and forth, before Robin encouraged her audience to go see ‘Second Chances’, coming out the Friday after Thanksgiving, and signed off her show.

After the cameras were turned off, Dani and I were relieved, Janet was elated. Robin Roberts was still curious, “Tell me, what was it like, really, you and Josh Brolin?” she asked, “I know you couldn’t say it on camera, but just between us girls.” She turned to me, “Robert, you might want to cover your ears,” with a smile.

“Honestly ... I’d have to admit that it was hard to abide by the rules. We were on the set over two months without ... you know ... and then some of these pretty intense scenes with a guy I’d drooled over in the past. Alan, too, I’d had a crush on him in high school, followed his football career, and he’s sooo sexy. And Tony was so adamant about realism. He was a great director, so much patience with me; Alan, too, he was in the same inexperienced boat as me.”

“That bother you, that your wife sounds like she was pretty ‘into it’ with these guys?” she asked me.

“I guess I’m going to have to see it before I can answer that, but I know it’s me she loves, sitting by my bedside in the hospital for four months pretty much proved that.” I thought for a few seconds, “but no, I don’t think it will, not after...” Oh shit, I almost said ‘not after her and Alan Ryder in my dream.’

“After? After what?”

I looked at Janet for some help here, “I, uhh, don’t think I’d better say any more. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“Well, now you have me really curious, but okay,” she said, “and we’ll end this now, I guess with my curiosity still intact,” she smiled and stood. Dani, Janet, and I stood also, and were shown the way out.

Janet was chuckling when we were in her car, “You almost said too much, but at least the cameras were off. I don’t think she’ll say anything but you can’t be sure. Other than that, you were both great,” she said, quite excitedly.

She drove us back into Times Square, “You like pizza?” she asked, “New York has some of the best pizza outside Italy.”

Dumb question.

She gave us a little tour before lunch, you’d think she was a New Yorker, not a Floridian. “I grew up here,” she explained when Dani asked her about it.

“After lunch, we’re doing an interview with Pat Reilly, a New York Post entertainment writer, then you have tickets to ‘Here Lies Love’, on Broadway.” She hesitated, a smile on her face, “I’m guessing you’ll love that ... then tomorrow your last interview in New York on ‘Fox and Friends’. I’ll meet you in the lobby at seven. Unfortunately, our interview in Los Angeles was canceled. I’m going to try to reschedule, but it doesn’t look promising.”

This whole thing was intimidating, to say the least, completely outside our realm of life’s experience, not that pretty much everything else had been, too, since I awoke from that coma.

Dani hardly seemed fazed, not like I was. Of course, she’d lived in the spotlight for several months, interacting with these people, maybe not exactly like what we were experiencing, but still...

We went to lunch at a ‘famous’ New York pizza place, Don Antonio’s. It was good (really good), but my homemade is still better.

Afterward, Janet took us to the offices of the Post. Our appointment with Pat Reilly was at two-thirty. It was nearly three before he came out of his office to greet us, shaking our hands, and apologizing profusely for the delay, then leading the three of us into his office.

“Marion, can you please bring us another chair,” he yelled out to his receptionist when he realized he was one short.

I waited, letting Dani and Janet sit, him on one end of a slight ‘U’ shape, Dani next to him, then Janet. Marion set the additional chair next to Janet, and I sat. He began by asking if there was any objection to a recorder.

“I’ve done a little research, understand there’s quite a story involved in your path to becoming an actress,” directing his comment to Dani.

She smiled, chuckling, “I think that’s quite an understatement,” she said.

“I’d love to hear it, I think that’s why you’re here. We have plenty of time, the rest of the afternoon.”

I couldn’t help but smile at that comment, trying to not break out with a laugh. The guy had no idea. Plenty of time – rest of the afternoon? Try about ten afternoons, FULL afternoons, that MIGHT be time.

So, Dani and I spent the next hour giving him the very short, sanitized version of events, a little more detailed than GMA. He broke in a few times asking questions, but seemingly never grasping the enormity of the whole string of events.

When we finished, he turned to me, “You say that you knew about this movie, the name of this agent in Tampa, even her phone number. You were in a coma, can you explain how you knew?”

I laughed, “I’ve been asked that question at least a thousand times, I have no friggin’ idea, and there was so much more. It seems like we’re still discovering some little thing I couldn’t know but do, like even though I’d never been to Tampa, I knew about the Pirate Taxi, all about Princess Ulele, restaurants and stores on the waterway, even the lipstick and Winsome Cosmetics, and so much more.” Yeah, and a few others, too, that I didn’t think I ought to mention.

He shook his head, like he wasn’t believing any of this. “So you were, what, there in your coma, in Tampa?”

I nodded, “Yeah, we both were, we were visiting a friend of Dani’s, a guy she’d gone to high school with.”

“This guy ... was that her co-star, Alan Ryder?” Danger, danger! I looked at Janet for reinforcement. She just nodded at me, I guess to go ahead. ‘Okay’, I thought, ‘with care, extreme care’, I had this feeling he was going to press so much harder than Robin Roberts had. “Yeah, it was, it’s how I knew of the movie in my coma, we were visiting him, his friend, April, this studio’s makeup artist – that’s another thing I couldn’t have known, that Dani’s studio’s real makeup artist is named April. Anyway, she was at his house, she invited Dani to come to the studio with her, they were shooting an ad for makeup that morning. Turned out the model they were using didn’t show up so April suggested Dani stand in. She was good, really good. A couple days later, they asked her to come in for another. Then they offered her a contract, hence Amanda, Dani’s agent entered the picture, told Dani about this movie that she should audition for, that she was certain she’d get the part ... turns out there really was a movie, just like in my dream, the agent ... everything.”

“Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything like that.” He turned to Janet, “This is for real, how she got this part?”

“I’ve been over this story with Robert from the very beginning, yeah, it’s for real. He knew the names, details of the movie, even Amanda’s phone number ... and when Dani auditioned, there wasn’t a doubt in the room that she was perfect.”

He was muttering to himself, “My readers are going to be...”

He turned to Dani, “You say you knew Alan in high school, what was that, was there a relationship there? Boyfriend, maybe?”

Dani blushed, giving away that there was at least something. “He was the star of our football team, I was a cheerleader. He had a girlfriend, but...” and her blush deepened, “I knew him, we’d been to some of the same parties but we never dated.” She hesitated, taking a deep breath, “When I was elected to the homecoming court, I asked him to be my escort. Robert...” another breath, “Robert wasn’t there that night, he’d graduated the year before, was off in college. But ... after he’d awakened from the coma, he told me about that night, how he’d been there in his coma, things he hadn’t known, like the picture ... there was a picture in the yearbook of Alan kissing me on the cheek with the crown on my head. But there was another one, too, one I hadn’t ever told Robert about, I’d turned my head, so that he kissed me on the lips and someone snapped a picture, I remember the flash at that instant, but I’d never told Robert about it. He asked me about that picture after he woke up, said he’d been there, seen it being taken.”

“More mysteries,” he said, turning back to me, “anything else from that night?”

God, I wanted to tell him, tell him all of it! “I knew her gown, she dug it out of an old trunk in her parents’ attic, exactly like I’d described to her. I went to the homecoming dance in my dream, saw them dancing together, saw ... they snuck into a little cubbyhole where concessions were sold during games, they kissed...”

Dani looked at me with wide eyes, her mouth agape in an unbelieving expression, her face white, “What? You’d never mentioned that before, no one ... no one knew!”

I looked straight back at her, “I didn’t realize it until just now, the picture popped in my mind, you and Alan, his hand under your dress in the dark room, that kiss...” and I realized my cock was hard with the memory.

I turned to Pat Reilly, “There were other things I saw that night, those turned out to be false, but that kiss ... I knew it happened the instant it popped into my mind, just now.”

Janet finally interjected herself, “Please don’t print that,” she said to him.

He smiled, “Tell you what, I’ll promise not to...” looking back at me, “if you’ll tell me what else you ‘thought’ you saw that night, and I won’t print that, either, it’ll just be for my knowledge.”

I looked at Janet for guidance, then to Dani. I couldn’t remember what else of that night I’d told Janet. Dani, yes, but Janet? I didn’t know.

“Up to you,” Janet said, “I’ve worked with Pat before, you can trust that if he says he won’t print it, he won’t.”

I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, and started, “They ... went to Dani’s house, her family was all gone hunting ... I followed them upstairs to her bedroom ... Dani had been a virgin before that night...” When I finished telling the story, I added, “It was all so real, still so fresh in my mind, like it had really happened, except I know now that it hadn’t ... except that kiss in the concession booth, that was very real.”

When I finished, Janet looked at her watch, “It’s getting late, I think we’d better stop,” starting to get up.

“First one more question,” he said. Janet rolled her eyes, acquiescing, sitting back down. “That trip to Tampa when you were ‘visiting’ Alan Ryder, I understand that was in the present, except still a dream, but was it more? Something you’re not telling me?”

“Still off the record? Not to be printed?” Janet asked.

He nodded, grudgingly, it looked, “Still off the record,” he agreed.

“Yeah,” I admitted, “it was a lot more, we were there for a week, Dani and Alan ... probably a lot more than your imagination would envision...” and I left it at that.

But he wouldn’t let it go, “So this movie, I understand there are some love scenes, are they...?”

“We really do have to go,” Janet said, “we have a dinner reservation for just a little while,” this time getting up and not backing down when he tried to elicit an answer about those love scenes.

“Well, that was interesting,” she said, once we were safely in her car. “A bit more than I’d anticipated.”

“Are you sure we can trust him?” Dani asked.

“I hope...” Janet muttered under her breath.

I turned to Dani, “You never told me about that kiss, why?”

She leaned her head back against the headrest, closing her eyes, “Because ... I was embarrassed, even a little ashamed, he had a girlfriend, it felt like cheating ... and I wanted him so bad that night ... later when he took Marci home, I felt like ... I don’t know, almost like he was cheating on me with her, I knew what he was going to do with her ... and I wanted it to be with me ... and it was a lot more than ‘just a kiss’.

I groaned, we still had a long evening, and all I really wanted to do was go back to our hotel, have Dani tell me exactly what had happened that night in that concession booth, and then spend the night fucking!

Janet pulled into the hotel porte-cochere to let us out, “Your Uber will be here in an hour, the driver’ll call you.”

Like I said, there was only one thing I wanted to do then, but the evening called. There wasn’t time to discuss what I wanted. Dani let me shower first because she knew I’d be in and out in a matter of minutes, not so much for her.

I finished my shower, let Dani take my place, brushed teeth, shaved off my five-o’clock shadow, and dressed in a nice pair of slacks and silk shirt that Dani had bought just for this trip. Then I sat on the bed, turned on the TV, and waited.