He’s experienced. I can tell even if he didn’t pull out any of his tricks tonight. Yet, as we both come down, he stares at me in true astonishment. As if this is the first time he’s ever done anything like this.
I understand his look. I’m pretty sure I’m wearing the same one on my face as I stare back at him. So good. So good. Better even than the meal I waited for all year. I wish it could go on forever.
But it can’t.
Eventually, he pulls out and sits up on the couch. Quiet, like he’s in some kind of shock.
Again, I understand. I feel the same way, too. Like I’m surprised and maybe won’t ever stop being confounded by what’s happened here tonight.
I reach out for the nearest item of clothing. The green dress with the sweetheart neckline.
“What are you doing?” His voice is no longer an elegant fusion of accents, but coarse and a little rough.
“Going. Like you already paid Eloa to,” I answer. Trying to sound cool. Trying to sound matter-of-fact. Even though I’m not cool. And not even my annual trip back into the multiverse feels as mind-blowing as the sex we just had. But this is an act of bacchanoel. Something meant to be left behind in the human realm.
I shake the dress out, prepared to pull it back on.
But then he catches my wrist and says, “Not yet. Stay. Stay until the morning.”
I look at him. And he looks at me. I have less than twenty-four hours left in San Francisco until it’s time to go back to the North Pole…
Men like Hayato never happen to elves like me. And may never ever do so again.
So I do it. I drop the dress. And I stay.
California Dreamin’
HAYATO
The last day of Christmas
It’s not just good sex.
Not just better sex than I would have enjoyed with Eloa.
It’s the best sex I’ve ever had.
It feels like we’re communing on some deeper level. Having a conversation even better than the one at dinner. Is this what sex feels like when there’s actually some connection? Or is it her?
I don’t know. Can’t parse what any of this means. Only that I can’t get enough of her.
First on the couch, then over it with her curvy backside thrust out as I take what I want to the soundtrack of more California 60’s rock and her breathless moans. Eventually, we make it to the bedroom. I take her there, too, with her warm thighs wrapped around my waist.
She’s hot. Figuratively and literally. Her body temperature seems to naturally run on a higher setting than mine and sweat breaks out across my skin because it feels like making love to a toasty fire.
I like it. Like her sweet heat. Like sinking into her complete warmth after a lifetime of cold, cynical sex.
I try to savor it, make myself go slower this time, but I end up ruining a third condom faster than I want to, even though it can’t have been three hours since she followed me into the suite.
We fall exhausted onto separate sides of the bed. My cock’s finally spent as I recover from the marathon session, breathing hard.
I could ask her to go. I usually don’t let the woman I pay spend the night.
But I didn’t technically pay her. And I don’t ask her to go.
Instead, I watch her fall asleep on the opposite side of the bed, thinking about what I’ll do to her when we both wake up. Have another delicious conversation, disguised as sex. Then maybe order breakfast before my flight leaves for Tokyo. Thoughts of how to extend this one-night-stand as far as possible into the next morning race around my head. Then sleep overtakes me, too, as a woman with a gentle singing voice instructs me to dream a little dream….
However, when I wake up from dreaming, Kristal is not there.
At first, I think maybe she’s gotten up to use the facilities, but then I sit up and see it…
A single piece of drawing paper, just like the one she gave Eloa. But instead of a young woman, there’s a sharpie portrait of an old man on mine. He looks to be of Asian descent and there’s something familiar about his eyes, but I can’t say quite what.
There’s a date beside his picture, January 5, the same day as today but with the following year written behind it. There’s also a note…
“Hayato, please go be with your loved one. You only have a year left with him until he dies. Jae-Hyun didn’t tell me either. I’m sorry, so sorry. Kristal.”
My loved one?
I have no idea who the man in the sharpie portrait is or why I should care about his imminent death.
But I do care that Kristal seems to have left my hotel suite, without so much as a goodbye. And she has left the suite. I look everywhere for her, but she’s nowhere to be found. The audio system is no longer cycling through her playlist, and her clothes are gone, along with the elf hat I took off last night before asking her to kiss me.
“Oh, now I get it. Why you pay so much for company. Because you only desire it for a little bit, then you want the women you date to go away and not require anything back from you.”
The thing is, I still desire Kristal’s company. The first thing I desired when I woke up this morning was her company. But she’s gone…and it feels like the opposite of a broken song.
It feels like something cut short before it’s even had a chance to begin.
No, I decide, it can’t end like this.
I have a few hours before my plane leaves for Japan, and I use all of them to search for her.
“Nakamura Hayato, chasing after a woman instead of the other way around. This is a first,” Daniel says on the phone, after instructing his latest lover to look up her name in his handwritten reservation book. Not having an online reservation system is meant to be part of Sukiyabashi Daniel’s traditional-meets-modern-world charm. A bold choice in a city as teched up as San Francisco. I fully approved of the branding tactic when he pitched the restaurant to me back in Tokyo, but I now I curse its absence as I wait for Daniel to report back. I might have at least been able to pull an IP address from his records if he kept them online.
“Her full name is Kristal Kringle,” Daniel tells me with a disbelieving, “Eh! I do not think she gave us her real name, Nakamura-san…”
He was right to think that. With the song “California Dreamin’ playing inside my head, I go through pages and pages of results on a few different search engines. But I can’t find any mention of or social media belonging to a Kristal Kringle who looked like the woman I met last night. I don’t bother performing a search on the name Jae-Hyun. Jae-Hyun is basically the “Jake” of Korea. But with only that most likely false name to go on, my substitute escort’s trail quickly goes ice cold. I keep looking anyway. Even going as far as to add the word “elf” to a few of my searches.
Until I receive a polite text from my driver. It’s time to go. Time to return to my real life in Japan. I must reel myself back in, I decide, closing my laptop.
Just losing her like that feels crazy to me. But not as crazy as delaying my flight back to Tokyo. I let her go.
Still, “California Dreamin’” continues to play inside my head on the way to the airport.
Instead of returning business emails in the back of the luxury SUV, I search the streets, looking for her. But I don’t see even one person in an elf hat. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s twelve days past Christmas. Of course, I won’t see any elf hats. Of course, I won’t see Kristal again. We were but two ships passing in the night.