Temptation

Florida - Four Months Ago

Being an acclaimed interior decorator in my head, it didn’t surprise me at all when I decided that our 41’ mobile mansion was not up to my personal standards. The rug got dirty all too easily. There was a scratch on the wood where the lounge chair kept scraping it, the direct result of my husband’s attempts to push it beyond its recliner status and turn it into his personal bed. The flooring in the kitchen area was grouted fake brick which retained elements of dinners past and refused to give them up no matter how hard I mopped. Which I have to admit, could be a good thing if we were ever caught in the forest without food. We could simply lick the floor.

And so on.

I put a mental number to my to-do list and set off to find the perfect RV renovator. In Florida, in the middle of discussions with one RV dealer who also did upgrades, John, a creature of no change at all, suggested that maybe instead of pouring twenty to thirty thousand dollars into our old bus, it might make sense to put that money into a newer vehicle with more of the amenities I now absolutely had to have.

Was this my creature of the rock? The man who having decided he was comfortable, never wanted to move so much as a book on the table for fear of disrupting his calm?

At the sound of this, I turned my head so sharply my teeth almost didn’t follow. He was serious. He was looking over my shoulder. I was pretty sure he hadn’t developed a lazy eye overnight, so I knew he had spotted something. There on a mound of earth in the winner’s corner of the lot, poised like the Heismann trophy on Joe Namath’s mantel, was a brand new Beaver Coach, even longer than ours and bearing the wondrous message “Special.”

It was shiny, it was new, it was clean inside! It was $700,000. I decided to look.

The first thing that hit me was the entrance into the coach. These were not my bumpy vinyl rubberized safety steps. These were granite. Shiny, black and as slippery as a grape. They were gorgeous. Now that was an entry, and damn the safety issues. But wait! The entire floor was black granite. Oh how gorgeous. Oh how beautiful. Oh, my practical mind said, how easy to keep clean. Just a little Swiffer and I’d be done for the day. I was in love.

I stepped up into the living area. Everything glistened. No, everything sparkled. I was standing in the middle of a diamond ring, a limpid lake, the sun, even. Every inch of the inside was gelled to perfection. The wood had maybe fifteen hundred coats of urethane. I could see myself in the cherry sheen of every surface. And what wasn’t wood was brilliant black trim. And what wasn’t wood or black was mirror, oh help me Elizabeth I had died and gone to heaven.

There were two bathrooms, two. And a full-size shower with a sliding door. And a king sized bed. And a washer and dryer. And a dishwasher. And everything sparkled. Oh Lordy, my wallet was throbbing to be opened, its cash intent on near-sexual release.


And oh, it was indeed sexual, this castle-in-a-coach.

The ceiling was a cacophony of tiny little lights, swirling wood trim, and mirrors. No wonder everything sparkled. The reflections just kept bouncing from one shiny surface to another and back again. My eyes were bewitched, my senses heightened, my reason impaired.

And then I realized. I was in a whorehouse. All it lacked were the red velvet drapes and the fancy women. No wonder I was so mesmerized, so dry in the mouth, so … I don’t know … turned on.

That was the point. This was a rolling cat house. And like every customer who has ever patronized one of those pleasure palaces, I was going to pay through the nose to stay this high and this excited.

Oh dear.

Suddenly my softy, cushy rug – did I say dirty? How silly of me. It was just colorful. – seemed so inviting. My little shower, so cozy. My sink with its dirty dishes so needful of my tender ministrations. My fake brick floor with its greedy grout so like a grubby, adorable child. My bus, home.

I had almost traded home for a wanton woman. Whew. That was a close one.

My wallet, no longer throbbing, sighed in relief. So did my conscience.

Temptation notwithstanding, I am at heart a good woman. And don’t you forget it.