Author: Jack
Keywords: .
Summary: Jenny takes a rest-stop in a run-down motel, and later awakes to the sound of the fire alarm.
Jenny was exhausted. After nearly twenty-four hours on the road, she simply couldn’t keep going, no matter how eager she was to join her husband at the end of his sales convention in Houston. The idea of driving down to join him, then taking some vacation time for a leisurely drive home together, had sounded good when they planned it. But too much time behind the wheel was making Jenny start to wish they’d found a different way to spend some time together.
After she changed lanes without really looking and nearly ran a large blue van off the road on the outskirts of Dallas, Jenny decided she needed a rest. She left the interstate at the next exit and picked the first hotel she spotted, a rather run-down brownstone building with a sign proclaiming it as The Lone Star Tower Hotel and Restaurant and advertising "The Best Chicken-Fried Steak in the State of Texas!"
Jenny wasn’t interested in something to eat. She wanted a few hours of sleep in a nice, soft bed. Yawning mightily, she stumbled into the lobby, checked in, and let the bellboy take her bag and lead her to room 404. Inside she tipped the young man, stifling another yawn, and waited for him to leave before looking around at her refuge.
Like the rest of the building, the room was shabby and faded, but the decor didn’t matter to Jenny in the least. The bed looked inviting, and that was all that mattered to her. Jenny found the Do Not Disturb sign and hung it outside, then paused in the middle of the room trying to decide what to do next. In her foggy state, it took an effort to make the simplest decision.
She considered taking a bath, or perhaps just a shower, but decided to postpone that until she had caught up on her sleep. It would feel good, she thought vaguely, to hit the road again fresh and clean, but right now she was afraid she’d doze off in the tub.
Instead she started getting undressed. She kicked off her shoes and dropped her socks on top of them, then undid her jeans and pulled them down. The room’s air conditioning felt good on her bare legs, and Jenny sat on the edge of the bed in her tank top and white panties for a few minutes just enjoying the feeling of freedom from tight pants, a cramped car, and the hot Texas sun beating down through the windshield all morning. Finally she roused herself enough to stand up and pull the light blue top over her head and toss it in a pile with the jeans.
Jenny looked at the bed again and thought about crawling into it as she was, in her bra and panties, but shook her head firmly. No, she had been wearing these things far too long, and she would sleep far better in something fresh and clean. She walked over to the dresser where the bellboy had left her suitcase and opened it up. Right on top was a lightweight robe, and just below that was one of the two nightgowns she had packed for the trip.
When Jenny had been packing, she had tried to be practical and bring only what she would need, but she’d made a small exception in the matter of sleepwear. She’d brought her favorite nightie for ordinary use, a long football sweatshirt that had belonged to her husband back in college, bearing his name and number from the year he’d been on the team. But there was also that negligee from Victoria’s Secret he’d given Jenny on her last birthday, a risqué little number cut to show off legs and chest, and made of a sheer white fabric that left hardly anything to the imagination. It had been a gag gift, the kind of thing Jenny was just too embarrassed to think about wearing normally. But it had been a couple of weeks since their busy schedules had left them with any time for romance, and Jenny had thought it would give their first night together on their little vacation that little extra sexy edge that would make things memorable.
It was the sexy nightgown with its matching g-string she pulled out of the suitcase first, and Jenny automatically started to set it down and root around in the bag some more when she yawned again and thought how tired she was. She didn’t want to keep searching through a stack of clothes, maybe make a big mess as she searched for her old reliable football shirt. She just wanted to get some rest. And, scandalous as it looked, the nightgown in her hand looked loose, cool, and comfortable. Who would know, or care, what Jenny wore for her nap?
With that thought she put the nightie down just long enough to undo her bra and slide her panties down her legs. Then she donned the g-string and pulled the top over her head. A glance in the mirror made Jenny blush; she looked like a hooker getting ready to party. She was glad no one could see her like this.
With that thought she started for the bed, stumbling once from sheer exhaustion. She dropped the robe across the foot of the mattress, where she could grab it if someone ignored the sign on the door and knocked. Then Jenny crawled under the covers, turned out the light, and laid her head on the pillow.
She was sound asleep in seconds.
Jenny came awake with a start, groggy from sleep and feeling as if she was still trapped in a dream she couldn’t quite recall. A strange noise she couldn’t place made an insistent bid for her attention, but Jenny was too groggy to place it right away. After a few long moments with the shrilling sound hammering at her eardrums she sat up in the bed, looked around blearily, and said, "Would somebody turn off that damned beeper?" Then she laid down again and tried using her pillow to smother out the ululating screech.
Another few moments passed before she woke up all the way. Beeper? That was no beeper. That was some kind of siren . . . .
Smoke alarm? Fire siren?
Jenny was out of bed and across the room to the window in a flash. Peering outside, she blinked at the glare of the late afternoon sun pouring in. She must have slept three or four hours at least. She gradually made out milling figures down on the ground, four stories below.
A crowd of people were in the parking lot, many of them pointing up at the building. There were some large red fire trucks down there, two, and a couple of helicopters circling the building like vultures.
Fire! That was a fire alarm that she was hearing, and if the building was already evacuated and the Dallas Fire Department was already on the scene it must have been on for quite a while. Jenny had managed to sleep right through it. She fought back a wave of fear. Surely there was still time for her to get out of here and down to terra firma. All she had to do was move quickly but calmly, not give in to panic. Jenny had dealt with plenty of difficult situations before – maybe nothing quite so dangerous as a fire, but tight spots nonetheless.
Control . . . that was all she needed. Control.
Jenny started for the door. Her eyes lit for a moment on the clothes piled by the dresser, but she knew it would be foolish to stop and dress. Every second counted. Instead she scooped up her robe and slid it on over her shoulders, covering up the flimsy see-through nightie. Thank heavens she’d had the foresight to lay it on the foot of the bed! Otherwise this could end up being one of THOSE situations . . .
She felt the door handle, just the way she’d been taught to check when there was a danger of fire, and when it seemed cool to the touch she opened the room door and peered cautiously out into the hall. Looking both ways, she couldn’t see anyone. With a firm step that made her robe billow out behind her, Jenny moved out into the hall, then paused as she tried to remember which way she had come from when she’d first arrived. She’d been so tired she had barely noticed her surroundings. Did she want to go left? Right? No, the elevators and the stairs were to the left . . .
The door behind her clicked firmly shut.
And when Jenny started to the left she found she couldn’t take more than a single step. Her robe was caught in the door.
She tugged at it, but it was made of sturdy material, and it was certainly stuck. Jenny muttered a curse and fought to maintain the calm and control she was trying so hard to cultivate. Her mind flashed back to a humiliating day at one of her old jobs and a skirt trapped by a security door, but she pushed that thought from her mind. Then she tried the door knob.
Locked, of course. And the magnetic card key that unlocked it was . . . On the dresser. In the room.
With a resigned sigh Jenny tugged at the robe one more time and then gave in to the inevitable. She squirmed and shifted until she could slip her arms out of the robe and left it dangling there. Feeling a chill that was only partly caused by the hotel’s air conditioning, Jenny padded down the hall in bare feet, arms crossed over her breasts. The nightie and matching panties had seemed revealing before. Now Jenny felt almost worse than she would have naked – a condition she was all too familiar with, which gave her a fine point for comparison – with the see-through material serving to enhance rather than cover her body underneath.
It was an emergency. She couldn’t worry about it now.
Jenny hastened into the waiting area by the elevator bank and looked around. She knew better than to call an elevator when there was a fire somewhere about. That left stairs . . . if she could find them. The first door she started for turned out to conceal a little laundry area, but in an alcove close by she finally spotted the arrow and sign that she was looking for. Jenny hurried to the door. . .
It was hot. She snatched her hand back and realized that she could actually see smoke billowing behind the window set high in the door, and more smoke seeping through the bottom of the door itself. The fire was here!
Jenny took a few quick steps back, once more trying to hold back the panic that threatened to grip her. What to do? Was there another way out? She should have taken the time to read the little set of emergency instructions posted in her room, but she’d been so tired . . .
As she stood and dithered, a new and louder siren went off just over her head. That must be the smoke alarm for this floor, reacting to the wisps of smoke rising from the stairway door. Jenny had almost gotten used to the other alarm, but this new noise was louder and even more shrill, and it made clear thinking even harder than before. She pressed her fists to her ears and tried to focus.
That was when the sprinkler system cut in.
Water cascaded from the ceiling-mounted sprinklers, like a waterfall pouring down on Jenny. In seconds the flimsy nightgown was soaked and plastered to her body, and her hair was a dripping blonde disaster area. Still, the shock of the water did help her concentrate, once she was over the initial surprise, and Jenny found herself remembering that the halls running in each direction ended with windows where she thought she had glimpsed some kind of fire escape.
She ran down the hall, with water still pouring on her as one set of sprinklers after another cut in. About halfway to her goal she felt an all-too-familiar tugging sensation around her hips, which made her reach for the waistband of her panties. The gesture came too late. Soaked with water and weighing about ten times what they were supposed to, they just weren’t up to the demands being placed on them. Before Jenny could grab them, the underpants were sliding down her legs. She barely stopped running in time to keep from tripping and falling, and she only caught herself by leaning heavily against the wall. Jenny yanked the water-logged panties all the way off and let them fall. She couldn’t trust them to stay on and she didn’t plan on being tripped up by her own lingerie.
Then she started running again, feeling considerably more agile now that she was free of the wet undies. Jenny reached the window and looked out.
There was a small balcony fitted out as a fire escape there, just as she had thought. Jenny strained to open the window, finally getting it to raise high enough that she could squeeze through. Standing on the uncomfortable criss-crossing metal in her bare feet, she leaned on the rail to catch her breath and get her bearings.
Wind whipped at her hair, and Jenny looked up to see a helicopter emblazoned with the letters KDLS-NEWS dropping down even with her balcony. A bearded young man with a bulky video camera was leaning out the side door of the chopper, his lens trained right on Jenny.
She had a momentary mind’s-eye view of what his camera would be picking up. Jenny was standing there in the bright Dallas sunlight, wearing a nightgown that barely came down over her upper thighs, with no panties underneath. The nightie, none too modest to begin with, was now virtually transparent after having been soaked by the sprinklers, and was clinging wetly to her nude body.
Jenny blushed crimson. She considered taking her chances with the fire.
Then reason prevailed and she cast around for the way down from the balcony and the prying eyes of the Fourth Estate. It was one of those old-fashioned fire escapes, with heavy metal ladders that were normally retracted but could be swung into place by pulling on them. Jenny used her bare foot to try to push the ladder from her level down, but it wouldn’t budge. She bent over to grab it, uncomfortably aware of the exposure that gave to her bare ass as the wet nightgown rode up, but determined to get through this and escape.
The ladder still wouldn’t move. The ancient thing was rusted, and nothing Jenny could do was likely to make it come free.
The helo had thankfully moved off while she was wrestling with the fire escape, but now the steady beat of the rotors was replaced by another mechanical sound. Straightening up, Jenny realized that it was the extension ladder from one of the fire trucks, slowly maneuvering toward her balcony. A large fireman in a yellow slicker stood in the basket, operating the controls. The ladder wobbled for a moment when the fireman first looked up and got a good view of the damsel in distress. Then he managed to wrench his mind – and his eyes – back on the job and bring the ladder right up against the metal rail.
"Come on, Miss!" he shouted. "Get aboard!" Jenny hesitated. Climbing up over that rail and into the basket didn’t look very safe . . . and she was sure it would rob her of any last vestiges of modesty.
As she wavered, the fireman shook his head. "Now’s not the time to panic," he said harshly. "Don’t worry. I’ll watch out for you!" That, of course, was a large part of Jenny’s problem, the fireman watching. But she gathered her wits and her courage together and started to swing one leg over the rail and into the basket. The fireman encouraged her, but thankfully kept his hands to himself. She could still remember a policeman who hadn’t been so careful in carrying out his duty . . .
Then Jenny stopped, halfway over into the basket. It wasn’t that she had frozen up again, or that she didn’t want to finish the maneuver and get down to the ground. Straddling the railing and the top of the basket half-naked, with her nightie now bunched around her waist and her pale bare ass sticking up in the air wasn’t Jenny’s idea of a good position to stay in for any length of time. But she didn’t have much choice.
Her nightie had snagged on something.
She felt the surface of the rail quickly, found the problem. The fabric had hung up on a bolt that projected from one of the supports below the rail. Jenny started trying to work it free, trying not to think of the eyeful she was giving to the Dallas fireman.
"Oh, for God’s sake!" she heard him say. "Come on!" Suddenly he had his hands on her, lifting her up and over. Jenny started to scream for him to stop, but it was too late.
The thin straps of the sodden nightgown gave way as he pulled, and then the whole back of the flimsy garment tore. The fireman set Jenny down on her feet inside the basket, stepped back to look at her and make sure she was all right. . . .
He stared at the nude blonde woman, his jaw going slack and his eyes in constant motion as he tried to take in the view. Jenny quickly tried to cover herself with her hands, knowing it was too little, too late.
Finally, he recovered enough to turn away and reach for the controls of the extension ladder. But he did keep darting little glances at her all the way down.
The ladder touched down in the middle of the crowded parking lot, and Jenny stepped down to the ground surrounded by a crowd of people who gave her appreciative stares, cat-calls, whistles, and shouted phone numbers. A pair of fireman came up with a blanket to wrap her in . . . slowly.
The fire at the Lone Star Tower Hotel consumed most of the third and fourth floors before it was finally brought under control, doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage though no one was killed or even seriously hurt. It proved to be a real bonanza for KDLS-TV’s Eye On News show during sweeps month, thanks to the live camera footage of a dramatic rescue on the fourth floor. Even after the blue dots were added in, the helicopter camera shots were easily the most exciting things any male in the city could remember.
For Jenny, though, the fire was really only the first of several problems she had that day. She had lost her luggage, all her clothes, her purse and money, and her car keys in the fire. And though there were plenty of Native Sons of Texas who seemed eager to help, she had trouble convincing herself that they were really just being good Samaritan coming to the aid of a distressed traveler.
Some things didn’t change no matter what part of the country Jenny happened to be visiting.