"Lake Tahoe" Part 1 (MF) "It is now safe to turn your computer off." I had just finished answering my last e-mail. It was to Bronwen, one of the fearless leaders of the Erotic Writers' Guild (of which I am a proud junior member). I'd posted to our Internet newsgroup that I was going to Lake Tahoe for a week, and she asked me if going to Lake Tahoe was a good thing. I thought it was; even if I had to work, I'd get some skiing in. I replied: "I'll let you know when I get back." Punching the off button on the computer, then looked up at the clock on my bedroom wall and saw that I'd been messing around a little too long. If I was going to make my 4:30 flight I'd have to get my butt in gear. As I pulled out of the long driveway to my apartment house and headed toward Portland up Highway 20, I made a mental list of the stuff I was taking with me. The whole trip was kind of weird. My boss had called me only the day before to tell me that we were to have a "Corporate Retreat" in a little town called Stateline, just north of Lake Tahoe. He said that meetings would be held on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On Saturday we'd take the day off and go skiing on Mount Rose. I think the idea was to make us more like a team. Well, so long as I have my skis on my roof rack, I'm up for anything. It would be like a vacation for me. I love to travel. Any excuse for it is a good one as far as I'm concerned. I'd fly to Buffalo, New York, just for the fun of flying there. (You get the picture?) I don't get to travel much, and, being twenty, don't have loads of cash. Basically, I live in three rooms in a huge old farmhouse/mansion off Highway 20, on the edge of Deschutes National Forest. It's a neat old house, but my space in it is small and only costs me $350 a month. Since I own my 1977 Jeep (built a year before I was born) and my computer belongs to the company I work for, my actual expenses are pretty low. Somehow, though, I always manage to live just a little above my income. Contact with the outside world is pretty limited when the biggest city near you is a place called Bend (It's OK if you've never heard of Bend. It's sort of in the middle of Oregon, and there's not much reason for anyone to know it even exists.) At any rate, I was stoked, and heading up the fog-shrouded highway to fun and adventure, with only a slight guilt pang that my boyfriend Jeff couldn't come with me. But this was business and I'd be working for three days (sort of - wink, wink!). Jeff, who's a structural engineer, was in the middle of a project anyway, and had been up in Seattle for almost a week when my boss called. I made Portland just fine. Got parked and through the construction-wracked terminal just in time to be one of the blessed first thirty passengers on Southwest Flight 1709 to Sacramento. (They don't have assigned seats, and even though I like people I hate having to sit in a middle seat.) We boarded, and left right on time. My plan was to catch up on reading several of my friends' Internet stories via the old laptop during the hour-and-a-half flight to Sacramento. I was sitting next to an older man (forty-ish) and made a special effort to introduce myself to him, and get to know him a little. He turned out to be a salesman, and also a reverend. He had his own church; his little congregation met at his house each Sunday. I usually draw my neighbor into reading my stories during a flight, unless I'm traveling with Jeff, when we keep each other busy. I like to get their reaction; it's fun to let them know that I write erotic stories for the Internet. It's also fun to see if they get aroused sitting next to me while we read a story together. (I've had several interesting encounters doing this on a flight, which I probably ought to write about some time.) However, I didn't think my salesman/preacher would appreciate what I did, so I positioned the computer screen to face the window so that he couldn't read it. I was determined to read without giving any outward signs that might indicate what I was doing. Luckily I'd already read Woodsmoke's story (It really makes me crazy when someone uses my name in their story; it turns me on to imagine myself into one). Fortunately no other authors had used my name, and I was able to get through all the stories without making a spectacle of myself, though some of them did make me feel kind of crazy. Anyway, everything went all right, and we landed at Sacramento International at 6:45pm. I was walking through the rather seedy-looking terminal when an announcement came over the loudspeaker: "Kristen Becker, please pick up a white courtesy phone." I'd never had that happen before. As a matter of fact, I wasn't sure what a white courtesy phone was. But, being smarter than your average blonde, I soon figured out that the white phones on the wall must be what was meant. It turned out that Andreaus (the big boss) had a son who was also attending our little retreat, and he wanted me to meet him at the Southwest Baggage Claim and bring him along with me to the meeting. I have to admit I was a little put off by this. Apparently Antonio (seems like all the men in my boss's family have "An" names) wouldn't be 18 for two more months, and therefore couldn't rent a car on his own. So I was stuck. You know what I mean; it's hard to say no to the boss when he's covering your expenses for a day on the slopes. I was wearing my black cold-weather outfit, and when I walked into the baggage claim I got a good response from the men there. (I like wearing tight outfits. It's fun to watch the lengths to which some men will go to to look at some leg. It's not that I'm a tease; I just know I look good in tight pants.) There was Antonio, standing by the carousel and undressing me with his eyes. I was a little taken aback by the unrelenting stare he was giving my body. And I do mean my body; I don't think he looked at my face until I was standing right in front of him, offering him a hand to shake. Looking back, it was kind of funny, because his hand was real sweaty, and he was super embarrassed, realizing that he'd been staring like an idiot. His dad is around 50 and has gray hair, so I didn't know what color it had been when he was younger. Apart from his sweaty hand- shake, Antonio's outstanding feature was his lovely, wavy, auburn-red hair, the kind that seems to fall into place without doing any- thing to it. (I suspected it was an expensive haircut.) He was also quite handsome, but, then, I find most men handsome, in one way or another. When the introduction was over we grabbed a luggage-cart and filled it with our baggage and skis, then headed toward the buses that take you to the rental cars. Going out of the terminal doors I saw that the weather had turned ugly; you could actually see the clouds moving overhead. The wind is something else in Sacramento; it cuts right through you, even in cold weather clothing. But I didn't mind; I just walked faster and made Antonio run after me to keep up. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a little bit pushy. It's not that I'm at all rude or mean; I just find it hard to be around slow people. I'm very athletic, and feel that men have a big advantage over women, strength- wise, and I've little patience with men who complain, or can't keep up with me. I gave little Antonio a hard time when he began whining about the pace I was setting; I just walked faster... I also said something that apparently offended his masculinity, and he was pretty morose for a time. Things livened up, though, when we got into our 1998 Blazer and it wouldn't start. I had to get an attendant to take a look at the vehicle for me, and he kind of pissed me off when he took the attitude that I was just another dumb blonde who knew nothing about cars. Well... anyway, it was a bad fuse, and it took him awhile to figure it out. I was ready for another car, but they had no more 4WDs on the lot, and I thought, what with the crummy weather, it would be wise to stick with the one we had since we would be doing some mountain driving. We finally left the Sacramento airport about 7:30pm, heading south on Interstate 5. I had no trouble finding the junction to Hwy 50, and then pushed the pedal to the metal. South Tahoe is a little over two hours from Sacramento, and I wanted to reach the hotel long before 10pm, so I was hurrying things a bit. About Plaserville the fog and snow started. The snow began falling like we were in the middle of a blizzard. I had to slow down to fifty just to see twenty feet in front of me (so much for 10pm!). I started getting worried when I saw the fog thickening, and, slowing the Blazer down to twenty-five, we began creeping up the two- lane road. I knew we were in trouble just after we passed Kyburz when the side of the hill to the right of us slid down into the river that ran along the side of the road. There had been a forest fire sometime in the past year or two and the soil erosion was obvious, even in the dark. I stopped the truck in the middle of the snow-covered road and we watched soil and tree stumps tumbling into the rushing river. It was pitch dark, and the only reason we'd seen the hill go was that the area had been framed in the Blazer's headlights at the moment it let loose. Realizing that the weather was turning even worse, I pushed on, hoping to cover the remaining twenty-nine miles to Lake Tahoe before anything else nasty happened. About ten miles farther on we had the big nasty, when the truck stopped. I mean, everything about it stopped. The headlights went out, the engine cut out, and we just sat there in the middle of the road. I kept trying to re-start the engine, but after turning the key fifty times with no result I finally gave up. Antonio, in his helpful, male, adolescent way suggested that the problem might be a fuse. I knew that! - it's just that it hadn't yet occurred to me. So I scrunched down to look at the area the rental guy had been working on, and started picking at the panel that covered it. Well... I couldn't get it off. Antonio eventually got tired of me hitting the dashboard and swearing at the plastic covering, so he got out of the passenger seat and trudged round the Blazer. Opening my door, he leaned in and flipped the hatch open. He flicked a Bic lighter to help him see what he was doing and soon found the bad fuse. He kept changing the fuses around as if he knew what he was doing, and eventually the headlights flashed on. I turned the ignition and the engine started up immediately - to stop once again as soon as Antonio had reclaimed the passenger seat. Cursing, he went to open his door again, but I grabbed his arm and said: "Just climb over me and I'll move to your side. The snow's getting too deep, and it's colder than the North Pole out there." Little Antonio hesitated, then did what I'd suggested. I hadn't planned on him rubbing his face across my chest, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and didn't punch him in the nuts to wipe the dumb grin off his face. Anyway, we couldn't get the Blazer to start again; Antonio reckoned that the lower-rated fuses were just popping their little filament thingies whenever we turned on the ignition. So there we were, stuck! The snow was coming down in bucketfuls, and the wind was whistling through a crack I'd left open in the driver's side window and then couldn't close because they were power windows (and we had no power). I suppose it took about ten minutes for all residual heat to be sucked out of the truck. It was about this time I realized that no cars had gone by us for almost a half-hour. I could barely see any tire tracks, since they had mostly filled up with snow. We learned later that when that hill slid down into the river it had made a kind of dam, bringing the water level up far enough to overflow the pavement. The authorities had caught on to the situation and stopped both the uphill traffic and the traffic from the top of the mountain until morning, making everyone go a different way. It really PO'ed me, though, that no-one checked the road to make sure it was empty. I guess they figured that everyone on it would keep traveling, and the people at the slide couldn't see us because we were miles up the road. I figured right away that something must be wrong, because Hwy 50 is quite an important artery between Lake Tahoe and the outside world. We waited another hour before I decided to put on the rest of my ski clothes over what I was already wearing. This is when I found out that sweet little Antonio only had a shaving kit and his laptop in his carry-on. He said his dad had everything, and that he was supposed to pick his stuff up at the consignor when we arrived (Oh great!). It wouldn't have mattered if we hadn't found ourselves stuck in a fog-blown snowstorm in sub-zero weather. I'm 5'4", and at my heaviest have never weighed more than 115 lbs (well, maybe 120, for six months, back in eighth grade). Antonio, on the other hand, was an inch over 6 feet and probably weighed 175 lbs (yes, he is big for his age, isn't he?). I hated doing it, but I told Antonio to put my parka on (it would probably never be the same again), and since there was absolutely no hope of him fitting into my pants (Damn those tight pants, anyway!) I had him wrap as much spare clothing as we had around his legs. Our one remaining problem was that we were still freezing. We talked for what seemed like days. I found out that Andy (he preferred that to Antonio) was a musician, and that his dad didn't like that one bit. I also found out that he thought of himself as a square peg being forced into a round hole (His words, not mine), and that he wanted nothing more than his father's approval for what he was, not for what he wanted him to be. I could identify with that. Not that my folks harassed me or anything; they had my older sister Amy for that. I was an angelic fair- haired child compared to her. Amy did things like sending naked pictures of herself out on the Internet, getting then caught when a friend of the family told dad about it.) The point is that Andy and I were connecting; I was starting to think there was a person behind those handsome blank eyes. Inevitably, though, being a teenage boy, Andy brought the subject around to sex. We were talking about the Internet, and where the company's future might be heading, when little Andy said: "You know, I probably have the world's largest collection of pornography on my computer." I raised an eyebrow. "What kind of porno- graphy are we talking about, little man?" "Nude pictures and dirty sex stories." He looked me in the eye, waiting for me to be shocked and horrified. I just smiled my most innocent smile and asked him: "Do you have any on your lap-top?" I think he was shocked that a female would respond with a question like that instead of being indignant. "Uh, yah, I do. You want to see some?" he asked, a little worried now. I asked how many pictures and how many stories he had in his collection, and he replied proudly that he had hundreds. He had piqued my curiosity; it's not every day you meet a fellow collector of erotica.