I hear the lapping of a gentle surf; sea breezes, and across a flat expanse of azure water I see a series of scalloped clouds that look like swirls of cream frosting on Viennese pastry. I feel motion, the wind whipping my hair and the rumble of the tires on a road surface passing below, but I am not inside a vehicle. It feels more like I am atop a vehicle, or in the cargo space of a truck, reclining amid a jumble of rucksacks and backpacks. I have company on this ride. A young couple, looking much like 1970s vagabonds, like someone you might have seen dancing at the Monterey Pop Festival, shares this ride with me. The man is slender with a huge grin and a scruffy beard. He wears huarachis, cotton shorts, and a billowy shirt with embroidery on the front. His partner, his lover, is an extremely petite girl wearing a similar billowy shirt over Daisy Duke cut-offs cropped so short that the front pockets are poking out the leg holes. She wears her hair in pigtails and her head is crowned with a rumpled straw cowboy hat.

The many rucksacks and backpacks in this cargo space suggest that there are other passengers, other similarly-dressed vagabonds sharing this ride with us. I can’t see them, can’t take an inventory because I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming, and also because this particular dream scenario dictates that I remain supine, sprawled as it were, with an unlimited view of the sky, of the horizon, of my two nameless vagabonds, but with no inkling of direction, destination, or how I came to be here. We rumble along on an uneven road.

As my body is pitched to and fro I feel flesh. I am wedged into this space and am spooning with other passengers. They roll into me and I lurch toward them with every bounce and pitch of the vehicle’s dubious suspension. I am experiencing flesh on flesh, but it is not intrusive, not unwelcome. There is anonymity to this bouncy rhythm, and more than a twinge of erotic possibility. A few more road-hazard bounces and the whole casual element becomes more deliberate, more defined.

I am being spooned by a man, with a man’s scent, a man’s hard angles, and fuzzy extremities. His arms embrace me and his hips cradle my derriere in a manner that cannot be happenstance. Each rumbling jolt, each dip of the vehicle’s struts draws me backward, my ass into his crotch—which feels firm and flat against my bottom. More potholes, more swaying and I feel something more than hip bones, more than abdominals. This has escalated to spooning with intent. I have transitioned from merely riding in this vehicle to riding… him.

* * * * *

“Hon?”

“Mmmmh?”

My mystery spooning man is nudging me. I am being shaken by an insistent and yet comforting presence, one that feels extremely familiar.

“Hon,” the intruder echoes. There is a hand on my hip, gently rocking me as I press backward, do a bit of slow grind against the body of this interloper. That will teach him to roll into me with carnal intent. I’ll give him taste of his own medicine.

“Hon!”

“Yes, Dan,” I murmur to my husband. “What is it?”

“Did you order a car?”

“Why would I do that?” I ask, gripping my pillow like a life-preserver. “We already have a car.”

“No,” Dan continued. “I mean a car and a chauffeur.”

That was an eye-opener, disengaging me from the pageant of sensory delights that accompanied me on that ride to…

“What time is it?” I question, sitting up and tucking my hair behind my ears.

“It’s seven-ten,” Dan replied. “Sorry for interrupting your dream.”

“Why? Was I talking?”

“You were smiling,” Dan replied. “Grinning like the cat that ate the canary.”

Dan was smiling too, all manly dimples and morning stubble, his hair rumpled by sleep into a kind of blond peak. A Danhawk. He was bare-chested, wearing his Father’s Day cotton pajama bottoms, the ones that occasionally gap at the fly. Dan made me promise to rectify that little problem, to sew the button shut but the truth is I sort of like that feature, especially in the morning when he is accidentally exposed. Like now.

“Aiden is already up and watching cartoons,” Dan said, as I ran my fingertips over his chin whiskers. This part wasn’t in my dream, but it could have been. “He wants to know where we’re going in the fancy car.”

“We’re going to Target to buy laundry detergent, Halloween candy, and some womanly essentials,” I said. “Then we’re going to Stetson Plaza to get a gym uniform for Harry. And if the boys are on their best behavior, I might consider stopping for a late lunch at the Rain Forest Café. That’s my Saturday itinerary, Dan, and none of it requires the services of a limo and a driver.”

“It’s not really a limo,” Dan observed, as he climbed out of bed. “It’s more of a Town Car.”

“Whatever. Have you told this chauffeur person that he’s got the wrong house?”

“I thought I’d wait for the newspaper to arrive so I would have an excuse to walk out there,” Dan called from the bathroom. I heard the shower door slide open, followed by the hiss of the water hitting his gorgeous body. Apparently Dan was also going to wait until he finished showering and shaving.

“If he waits at the wrong house, he’s going to get fired,” I called, plucking my bathrobe from its hanger.

“What?” Dan shouted above the noise.

It fell to me to deal with this misguided chauffeur and his clearly inept dispatcher. I shuffled into the living room, deliberately avoiding our picture window, busying myself with reflexive mommy-tasks like picking up scattered toys and sports equipment. Boys, I’ve discovered, are clutter machines. Or maybe it’s just our boys. Aiden, our five-year-old, was parked as predicted in front of the television. Although we were still days ahead of Halloween, he was already wearing his Spiderman costume. He’d worn it to bed every night for a week, immersing himself in the character.

“You want cereal, hon?” I asked, crossing to the window.

“Pancakes,” he replied, eyes glued to the antics of Spongebob.

“Give me a few minutes,” I told him.

I stooped to collect a t-ball stand, and when I straightened up, I had a view right across our front yard and into the cul-de-sac. There, standing like some plastic figure on top of a wedding cake, was the chauffeur. He struck the classic wedding cake pose beside the rear fender of a Lincoln that had been waxed to a near-liquid sheen. The driver wore a natty little chauffeur’s cap and had impeccable, military-grade posture. The clock on the wall said seven-twenty. For all I knew, the poor bastard could have been standing there all night. This vigilant, slightly creepy person needed a name so I christened him Town Car Timmy.

* * * * *

I was still carrying Aiden’s t-ball tee in one hand and that morning’s Arizona Republic in the other when I strolled down my driveway and confronted Town Car Timmy. I hadn’t had coffee. I hadn’t yet touched my hair, and thus most certainly looked the part of the hausfrau from hell. But no matter. I needed to dismiss this chauffeur before the neighbors spotted him. The last thing I wanted was to have Mrs. Welks or that busybody gadfly Barry Coughlin spot the Town Car and make all sorts of assumptions about rock star lifestyles and hidden wealth. My authority was somewhat undermined by the kiddie toy in my hand, but I forged ahead.

“Is there something I can do for you?” I demanded.

I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but the driver seemed unperturbed. His lips parted beneath his groomed moustache and the man said, “If you would just please collect your things, we’ll get going.”

“Get going where?”

“To the airport, ma’am,” he intoned.

“Catching a flight, are we?” I asked.

“We are indeed,” he replied.

“Interesting.” I set the t-ball stand down to cross my arms. “And what time does this flight leave?”

“Whenever you get there,” the driver replied.

I collected my newspaper and my t-ball tee, turned on my slippered heel and marched back into the house. I closed our front blinds. As they slid shut, I took a final peek at the cul-de-sac and noted that the strange tableau was unchanged. Timmy had not budged. Creepy indeed. I also caught a flutter of motion from the front window of the Coughlin house. Busybody Barry was on the case.

My lifestyle upgrade to the private jet-set—brought on in my mind by the appearance of a chauffeur in a Town Car wearing a cap and a suit—lasted for as long as it took me to return to our kitchen and start making pancakes. Something about the stack of dirty dishes in our sink, the overflowing trash bin and the dog grazing on spilled Pirate’s Booty brought me straight back to earth. People who fly via Gulfstream tend to have a domestic staff or, at the very least, a housekeeper who periodically swoops in to restore order and organize shelves. We have no such angel. Before I could make pancakes I would need to locate the pancake mix and likely wash every dish needed for the production. The ensuing pan scrubbing, dog-scolding, and search for ingredients provided me time to contemplate the unseen forces that were manipulating Town Car Timmy—and by association, manipulating me.

Timmy was really just an emissary, a hapless dupe retained by some mid-level manager who worked for an arbitrage mogul named H. Wayne Newcombe. Warlock, mogul, whatever. The point is, Wayne Newcombe is not the sort of person you can easily ignore. From the first moment we encountered him—Dan and I had shared a hot tub with Newcombe, his date, and another couple at Pagoda Pines resort—I sensed a peculiar gravitas.

It wasn’t that Newcombe just-so-happened to own the resort where we were staying, plus the valley in which it was situated. No, Wayne Newcombe’s quirky magnetism was not about wealth or prestige. It was more zen than that, more like one of those white-bearded Shaolin senseis you see in kung fu movies, placid monks who can kill you with a finger strike.

In retrospect, Dan and I should have been more cautious, a bit more leery of Wayne Newcombe’s intentions. You could chalk it up to the resort’s salacious ambience, to its rarified mountain mojo. But we eventually realized that Newcombe wasn’t merely socializing at Pagoda Pines, he was recruiting, methodically expanding a sphere of influence that had nothing to do with real estate, or arbitrage, or private equity. Newcombe’s real motives were divulged to me by the one person in a position to know, his acolyte and emissary Meghan Dunleavy.

Meghan and her husband Al constituted our very first foray into that intoxicating endeavor known as the “soft swing”. Soft-swinging is mostly a license to play with—or alongside—another couple without the corresponding guilt and jealousy you might encounter in a classic spouse-swap. You get the novelty of a new partner; that forbidden sense of adventure. The sex seems vaguely conventional.

But a soft swing—at least for us—doesn’t violate anyone’s vows, doesn’t threaten that fragile bond of trust between an otherwise open-minded couple. Like those single-serving cups of Hagen Daz, you get just enough to gratify your sweet tooth, but not enough calories to feel actual remorse. Of course the couple you choose—the ice cream flavor—and the locale of your tete á tete can make a world of difference. The Dunleavys are an exceptionally attractive couple, the sort that will turn heads in any restaurant or nightclub they enter.

So there was that enticement, compounded by the Pagoda Pines ambience, a place that all but crackled with erotic vibes. Upon our arrival at Pagoda, Dan and I both had a sensation of crossing a threshold, of abandoning our parenting selves. At Pagoda we were embraced, immersed. Transformed. Our consciousness was raised in several ways, but the pre-eminent transformation was sexual.

Our Pagoda experience impacted us and our marriage in ways that we hadn’t anticipated. It was the source of inspiration for my recurring sexual dreams, like the travel or transit dream I had the night before where I am spooning with strangers. I have even more explicitly sexual dreams. Sometimes these episodes are triggered by ovulation. Other times, the dreams arrive unbidden, inspired by a good meal, a glass of crisp Chablis, tequila shots. Or maybe nothing.

I may already have made love with Dan, felt his hands and mouth on me, his cock inside me, and yet it’s as if my subconscious isn’t sated, isn’t fully satisfied. So the reel commences or re-starts or ends and begins again. The point is, erotic dreams are insinuating themselves into my waking life, into my marriage. But until Town Car Timmy arrived in our cul de sac, I hadn’t fully realized what inspired and informed those dreams.

Oddly, my dreams aren’t located at Pagoda Pines or in a woodsy ravine in southwestern Colorado. No, my dreams are persistently tropical—the Caribbean perhaps, or maybe French Polynesia. They transport me to the kind of environs that I long for when I am overwhelmed by writing and parenting and life.

The kid-shuttling and the laundry get done. I meet the deadlines for my column and my blog. We have family outings, we have date nights. But all that magical eroticism we experienced in Colorado, that mountain mojo that brought Dan and me to the emotional and sexual brink has been shelved. Suppressed. Relegated to dreams until this day, until this surreal morning when The Order of the Swallow re-asserted itself in the person of Town Car Timmy.