The dark holds him close, like a lover maybe, he thought with a grin. The dark is his friend, his protection. It is a summer night. There is no moon. The stars twinkle above him as he waits in his hiding place.
His name is Jimmy. He is an eighteen year old senior at Hay Long High. He is hidden, waiting as he has before, waiting for Mrs. Johnson to appear.
Jimmy is an athletic kid. A little over six feet tall with a strong body from playing basketball at school and on any playground where he could find a game. His brown hair is cut close, his brown eyes reflective of intelligence and a sense of humor. Tonight he's wearing jeans, some old basketball shoes, no socks, and his favorite t-shirt. The t-shirt is black with a great abstract design on the front. J.C.Q., it says, for John Coltrane Quartet, his father told him. His father had picked it up on a trip into the City, a shop in Soho. Jimmy liked the t-shirt but knew little about J.C.Q. He thought they were a band similar to the Dave Matthews Band.
Jimmy is patient while he waits. The binoculars hanging around his neck are ready, willing partners in a special experience.
Mrs. Johnson usually comes down to her family room around 9:00 p.m. She is always alone. He had found her to be a pretty predictable person.
Jimmy knows a lot about Mrs. Johnson. She teaches English at his high school. She is divorced. She lives alone. Her only child, her son, Alex, is away being a freshman at Ohio State. Jimmy and Alex had played varsity basketball together last year. They had been good friends. I suppose we still are, thought Jimmy. Jimmy guessed Mrs. Johnson to be a little less than forty years old. Close, maybe. She has brown hair cut short, and brown eyes much like his own. She works out. Jimmy has watched her working out at the local YMCA. She usually runs on a treadmill for twenty or thirty minutes then goes through the Nautilus machines hard. In fact, it was at the YMCA where Jimmy first started taking an interest in Mrs. Johnson. He had been in and out of the Johnson home for years as he and Alex grew up moving from playground to playground for pick-up basketball games.
Mrs. Johnson had always been nice when she'd seen him but Jimmy really hadn't taken much notice of her. But in the gym it had been different. Mrs. Johnson worked out hard, pushing herself. Jimmy liked that. Jimmy also liked the look of her frame. Her legs are strong, firm, shaped, her ass tight and just right, a high jumper's ass, her middle tapered, flat, her shoulders perfect in a strong yet feminine way, her breasts not too large but having a fullness that he could really get into. And her pubic hair is dark brown and untrimmed. Jimmy hadn't seen her pubic hair at the gym, but he knew about it. He had seen it many times when she came down to the family room alone in her white cloth robe.
Jimmy had come to recognize that Mrs. Johnson plays on the internet.
Most nights after 9:00 p.m. or so she comes downstairs to the family room wearing only her white robe. She sits in front of the computer reading then typing, reading then typing, reading then typing. Sometimes, most times lately, she eventually opens the robe and plays with herself. And Jimmy watches through his father's expensive binoculars.
But tonight Jimmy hoped things might be a bit different. Tonight it was actually nearly 9:15 when she came down the stairs and into the family room. As always she is wearing the white robe. There are monogrammed initials on the sleeve, maybe from a hotel or something, but Jimmy can't quite read what they are. She is carrying a mug of something to drink, tea or coffee, perhaps. As she walks by the computer on the desk, she turned it on, continuing to walk past it to the table with the lit lamp.
She dims the light and turns. In her turn, Jimmy catches a glimmer of her leg moving through the front of the robe. Her tanned smooth leg makes him remember her working out. Jimmy has actually stood behind Mrs. Johnson in the gym while she did squats with weights. He watched her ass move back and down, dipping low before powering the bar up. Jimmy watched in the gym and he remembered seeing that same ass here in her family room. That same nice ass, naked, straining, moving seductively while her fingers worked between her legs.
Tonight Mrs. Johnson clicked through various places on her computer. Jimmy could see the screen shift and pause to change. He is thankful for the lamp by the couch. Without it the dim blue light from the computer would only give him shapes and shadows to see. The lamp cast an amber light on Mrs. Johnson where she sat.
Jimmy guessed that she usually ended up in some sort of chat room on the internet. He had seen a few of those but not spent enough time to really discover how to use them. Tonight she seemed to find what she wanted pretty quickly. Maybe it's just that she got a late start, he thought.
Mrs. Johnson sipped from her mug and appeared to be reading. She sat the mug down and began to type. Jimmy watched her fingers move gracefully over the keyboard. He looked at the shape of her neck rising out of the pillow of the robe's collar. She wore no earrings, no jewelry that he could see. She must have just taken a bath, he was thinking.
It's starting, he said to himself. He watched her hand now free of the mug move into the top of the robe. She is caressing her breasts, he could see. Her hand moves back and forth giving each breast equal time, equal arousal, equal touching.
Mrs. Johnson moved away from the computer, surprising Jimmy. This is new. She sits on the couch and reaches for the phone. She dials, waits, and begins to talk. He sees her smiling, appearing to be whispering in spite of no one else being in the house. Then he sees her hand move into the front of the robe at her waist. Her hand moves downward. And then he knows she is touching her pussy. She has to be, he thinks.
Her left leg moves up, her foot to the coffee table, and he can see her hand pressing into her. Her fingers are flat, moving slowly over her clit. Her untrimmed full pubic hair bunches around her fingers.
She is still talking on the phone. Her head is back against the couch, her eyes closed. Jimmy sees her middle finger push inside her to gather moisture before it returns to her clit. Her hand moves up from her pussy and pushes back the robe from her breasts before slowly circling each nipple with her wet finger. Then it's back to her pussy, rubbing more urgently, faster, harder.
Jimmy's nerves were challenging him. If you ever, he told himself, if you ever. No one had to tell him, no one had to be there to coach him or push him. He knew.
Jimmy rose from his hiding place and began to walk toward the front door of Mrs. Johnson's house.
Jimmy finishes knocking a second series of taps and begins to wonder if she will come to the door. His hand rises to knock one last time when a light comes on in the vestibule. Mrs. Johnson, holding her white robe closed at her breast, peeps through the glass window beside the front door.
"Jimmy?" he hears her say.
"Yes, Mrs. Johnson," he calls back trying to smile.
The dead bolt lock clicks and she pulls the door open with a quizzical look on her face.
"Jimmy," she says, "What is it?"
"May I come in, Mrs. Johnson?" Jimmy asks
"It's late, Jimmy," she answers, "and I just got out of the bath."
"I won't take but just a minute," he smiles.
She steps back offering him passage inside. He steps through the door with a sense of achievement. He smells the faint smell of soap, shampoo, and sex. Or maybe, he thinks to himself, the sex smell is a vanilla candle or something. Jimmy hadn't smelled the smell of a woman's sex enough to really recognize it with certainty.
Mrs. Johnson stands with her robe pulled tightly together obviously trying to figure why Jimmy would be on her doorstep at such a late hour.
"I talked with Alex by phone today," he began. "He sounds like he's having fun at State. Anyway, he mentioned some music, a few CDs, he'd let me borrow. You mind if I go up to his room and get them, Mrs. Johnson?"
"You came here to get some CDs?" she almost smiles.
"Yes, Ma'am," he responds with his best bullshit look.
"Okay, come on." And with that she starts up the stairs, that nice ass working in naked bliss under the well-washed white robe.
Jimmy followed but not too closely. He wanted to be able to see that ass moving.
In the upstairs hall, Mrs. Johnson stops at Alex's old bedroom door. She steps back wordlessly and watches as Jimmy steps inside. The room was already lit. Alex's old brass double bed stood between the door and the bookshelves under the window. Guessing, Jimmy moves to the bookshelves and begin to search through the CDs. While he looks he tries to ad lib his next move. Just leave, he wondered? Try to talk with her maybe?
"Jimmy?" Mrs. Johnson says from the doorway.
He turns to see her staring at him.
"Why do you have those binoculars around your neck?" she asks quietly.
"Oh, these," he smiles. Oh, shit, he thinks. "They're for, ah, comets, shooting stars. Supposed to be a lot of them tonight."
"Do you watch them from your knees?" she asks evenly.
"Ma'am?"
"From your knees, Jimmy," she continues. "The knees of your jeans are muddy. You've been kneeling somewhere. The mud is wet so it wasn't long ago."
Jimmy looked down at his pants wondering if all mothers went to some secret agent school of interrogation and analysis.
"Jimmy," Mrs. Johnson says firmly but still quietly. "Have you been looking in my windows at me?"
