Deaths Excellent Vacation

thought. I’ve got myself a stalker.
    “Who is it?” Diana called.
    Tim froze, brow furrowed. Had the knock been at his door or at hers? With the walls so thin, it was difficult to know.
    A muffled voice replied. He heard Diana unlocking her door and, out of curiosity, pressed his ear to the wall again. The rattle of a room service cart was followed by a murmur of voices. Tim fancied he could smell food—a burger, maybe?
    He glanced at the nightstand. In the pitch dark of his room he could barely make out the glow of the alarm clock, which he’d turned away from him. Now he felt his way onto the bed and crawled over to it, turning the clock around to read the time.
    Room service at two thirteen A.M.? Did this hotel even have twenty-four-hour room service? Or had Diana persuaded someone to break the rules for her? Tim had a feeling Diana had spent her entire life tempting and cajoling and getting exactly the result she desired.
    A spark of irritation ignited within him. Though he felt a now- familiar stirring at the thought of her, his frustration at this long night of broken sleep trumped any lingering arousal.
    From next door he heard the sound of a door closing, and he assumed the room service guy had left. But a moment later the murmur of voices began again, both hers and a man’s, and then they moved nearer and he heard the creak of weight upon the bed.
    “Trust me,” he heard Diana say, “this is going to be the best tip you’ve ever gotten.”
    Tim couldn’t help himself. He laughed softly, falling back onto the bed. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
    But he should not have been surprised. Diana had told him that if he wouldn’t come over and have sex with her, she would call room service. He supposed things like this must happen fairly often in the real world, but to him it seemed like something out of the Penthouse letters page or some porn film.
    Already the noises had begun. How fast had she stripped the guy? Tim lay there staring at the ceiling in the dark and listened to the grunts and moans quickening. Diana urged the room service delivery guy in words almost identical to those she had used with her lover of the previous night. Tim began to get an erection, and he felt a ripple of anger at himself. Tired and frayed and amused, he should not find any of this arousing, but he could not help himself. Men were pitifully predictable creatures.
    Not so predictable, he thought. You didn’t go over there.
    But he knew that meant little. Under other circumstances, he would have jumped at the chance to be with a woman like Diana and been just as grateful as, no doubt, the room service guy felt at that very moment.
    The noises in the next room reached an initial crescendo, with Diana crying out in a throaty, shuddery orgasm followed almost immediately by the groan of a man stunned by his own good fortune. If last night was any indication, though, Diana would not let it go at that. As soon as the guy had a few minutes’ rest . . .
    The groan had not stopped. The man’s voice began to rise and fall, perhaps with each spasm of his own orgasm. It sounded like he was still coming, like she had brought him to the height of ecstasy and somehow managed to keep him there. The guy cried out to God, but even those words were barely more than grunts.
    The headboard slammed the wall in quick rhythm, punctuating each spasm. Diana talked to him, urged him on, and Tim wondered what kind of woman this was, what tantric magic she had that could keep a man locked in ecstasy, and suddenly he knew that although he would always know he had done the right thing, he would also forever regret not having felt what the lucky son of a bitch next door was feeling in that moment.
    And then the room service guy began to cry.
    In the midst of his climactic groaning, he sobbed and began to say “please” every few seconds. The tone alone told Tim that the man wanted it to end. That he had had enough.
    Diana laughed.
    “Come on, baby,” she said. “Fuck me harder.”
    Then it was her turn to moan, sounding the way some lovers did when they were locked in a deep kiss, or during oral sex. Tim’s erection had returned full force even as he listened with growing unease. The room service guy’s cries sounded full of pain now, even fear.
    Tim reached out and turned on the light. Sitting up in bed, he stared at the wall, trying to decide what exactly he was hearing.
    You’re to blame for what happens, Diana had said.
    But