Although the television had dire warnings about Hurricane Isabel, the sky was still clear. Julia threw open the windows of her luxury condo and breathed in the air. Ah, the scent of lavender. As she breathed, her pale silk blouse hugged her firm, proud breasts. In the distance, courtesy lights gleamed along the walkway beside the golf course.
Julia Morgan, that was her name. No relation to the architect. She was young and she was restless. As she sat on her sofa, her firm, supple legs kept crossing and uncrossing in "Basic Instinct"-like fashion. Julia did resemble the star of that movie. They had the same direct, taunting gaze.
What did Julia need? Indeed, what did she want that evening? Freud had no idea. She reclined in formless indecision. Not that she was formless herself. No, she was very well formed, lean yet lush, firm yet full. Did "form follow function," as Louis Sullivan once declared? She had no idea, but her former boyfriend had stated that her body was designed for sin. Not that Julia saw sex as sin. But a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a metaphor?
A walk? Yes, perhaps, the exercise would do her good. The heat of the day was beginning to recede and the threat of a thunderstorm did not seem so immediate as to prevent her evening constitutional. A stroll, yes, that would be the cure for her free-floating anxiety. Walking was good for Harry Truman, and it would prove salubrious for Julia as well. Julia had heard that, after a Brazilian Wax, a gal did not merely walk, but glide. Julia knew it was so.
But how to dress for the impending walk? That was the question. Whether twas nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of slingbacks. But other issues intruded. Julia had no intention of looking like Bess Truman. Julia walked to her bedroom, turned toward the full-length mirror, and began to remove her t-shirt and jeans. For this walk along the secluded footpath along the golf course, Julia felt that a casual blouse and sarong combination would be most appropriate. Standing before the mirror in only a deep red stretchy cotton demi-bra and matching thong, Julia could not help but admire her own firm, tan form. She noted, with no small sense of shopping satisfaction, the white piping on the cotton bra.
Julia decided. Yes, the thong would be perfect under the sarong. Julia recalled her former boyfriend, Raoul Rivera, who had been killed so tragically in that plane crash in Indonesia one year ago. Raoul had enjoyed knowing that beneath her sarong, with its conceal-reveal design, she wore a thong. He enjoyed knowing that beneath her thong lurked smooth, shaven flesh. Something about such knowledge teased the mind and inclined it toward the prospect of delicious orgasms.
Oh, it had been a year like that with Raoul, one of strong passions and thong theories. A year of living dangerously, as it were. She trembled at the memory of him holding her hair aside and kissing the back of her neck. The memories, pressed between the pages. Filled with a sudden passion, Julia's eyes turned involuntarily toward her toy chest and she began to buzz with anticipation. So to speak.
Julia had toys for this purpose, toys for that purpose. Often, in moments of tension, she would use several of the toys together, allowing them to transport her to ecstasy. Just last evening, Julia had combined her bright red G-spot jelly vibrator with a very slender, oiled anal plug, and then used a clitoral stimulator to transport herself to several fabulous orgasms. Wasn't it Einstein who said good orgasms were unavoidable if you teased enough erogenous zones? Perhaps not. In any event, Julia didn't want toys just then. Instead, she needed to exercise her sleek, subtly muscular legs with a walk.
As the mirror reflected her firm legs, Julia turned to her pump bottle of Cutter insect repellant. She knew that the threat of West Nile was minimal, but she also knew that the pump spray contained aloe and vitamin E. As she slowly rubbed the pleasant protection on her legs, the song "Night Moves" played on the radio. The process of slowly applying the spray to her legs did nothing whatever to calm Julia's mounting restlessness, and she began to hum "The Wayward Wind." As she lifted the sarong slightly to apply protection to her thighs, Julia wondered if she was doomed to wander.
The night was warm as Julia walked across the thick Bermuda grass. It was wet with dew and felt cool on her bare feet and she wondered why she was thinking like Hemingway wrote. She noted the scudding clouds, but concluded again that the rain would be deferred for several hours. As she strolled in the humid twilight, her mind turned, for unknown reasons, to the golf pro named "Nick" she had met briefly so many times. She could picture him with a wood on the links. No, she thought, a driver. Would Nick be rough on the fairway? No, no, she could not wonder. Julia's tan forehead wrinkled in exasperation at her own inability to focus on the sheer relaxation of her walk.
Sheer? Yes, her sarong did become sheer every time the winding path took her by the courtesy lights. When that happened, the gentle lights seemed to caress her tan, supple thighs, almost as Raoul's strong hands had done. Ah, but those days were gone, glimmering through the dreams of days that were. Julia remained, and so did her vigorous passions.
Julia slipped out the back entrance to the condo and onto the cart path bordering the third hole. It was a 265-yard dogleg, providing a nice entrance onto the front nine and ending at the clubhouse, where it might still be possible to take a swim in the Olympic-sized pool. Something about swimming after dark was more alluring than in the heat of the afternoon, with the underwater lights illuminating the aquamarine water.
Thoughts of swimming after dark turned her mind, as it often did, to that night at the beach. Years ago, while in college, Julia had known a guy named Lance. He was young, and Lance was boiling with desire. They used to walk by the ocean at night. They were fit, and tan, and they had seen "From Here to Eternity." Inevitably, they spoke of trying to imitate the Burt Lancaster-Deborah Kerr kissing scene. And so it was, one humid summer night, that Julia and Lance reclined at the edge of the water and began to kiss as the surf licked at their firm, young bodies.
Julia kissed Lance, slowly, sensually. Then Lance kissed Julia, and his kisses trailed to her neck, her shoulders. Soon -- perhaps it was inevitable -- they forgot about old movies. The wet sand felt cool and welcoming as their bodies writhed in ecstasy on the shore. Their lust was liquid and literally littoral. And then the unthinkable happened. With an alarming crunch of gears, their lithe, nude bodies were almost consumed by a gigantic sand-cleaning machine as it rampaged down the beach on its appointed rounds. They escaped in a nick of time.
Cold sweat? It wasn't just a James Brown lyric to Julia after that fateful encounter. She yearned for another watery encounter to exorcise those demons. Yet, as fate would have it, all her subsequent boyfriends sought sex on dry land. Of course, Julia was able to entice them into having sex with her in the shower. But not a swimming pool at night. Not to an ocean shore. Thus it was that Julia found herself frustrated, yearning for the passionate embrace of a lover in the warm rain.
As she pondered, the pulsing cadence of the sprinklers lulled Julia into almost complete relaxation. The thought of a late night swim made her feel warm, so she undid the buttons of her blouse and tied it around her waist to let the night breezes tease her with their coolness. It still felt warm, so she looked around, made certain that she was alone, and removed the bra as well. She felt her nipples begin to swell as the cool air washed over them.