In his own mind, he wasn't old. He had just retired with a decent income, but he loved visiting the beach whenever he could. His gray hair and puggy tummy were a dead giveaway to his over-the-hill age bracket, but aside from his single beach chair and matching beach umbrella and towel monogrammed from a popular nearby surf shop no one knew anything about him. He could have just been a well-appointed bum for all the locals knew. It hardly mattered in this clearly tourist destination beach town. He arrived daily and stayed until well-past two in the afternoon - considered "prime tanning rays" from the Florida sunshine. He never liked the old man with pasty skin look.
He read from a brown-paged, dog-eared paperback novel which was always bookmarked at the same page. He sat alone just listening to the waves as they crashed along the shoreline. He watched families have fun watching their children play... and remembering his own kids playing, so long ago. He loved the low tide the best because the beach seemed larger, but the incoming tide created nicer waves as the tide rolled-in and seemed the most inviting, but nobody knew that about him. He kept to himself.
He sat shirtless and quiet, getting his sunrays and pretending to read his old novel until the seagulls or sandpipers did something funny or interesting. Then he grabbed his old professional digital camera with the long lens out of his beach bag and fired off a few shots; sometimes in a longer series to record the incident. He once captured three, one-legged sandpipers standing in a circle seemingly chatting away about their adventures in each losing a leg. It was his hobby for him now, and he enjoyed it but it was once his profession. It was never anything National Geographic might want to buy for publication, but it was his amusement. That is, until that day that SHE walked by.
She walked with purpose at a medium gait close to the shoreline leaving perfectly formed reflections of her sole in footprints of wet sand and never feeling the splash of the incoming waves. Her eyes were fixated on the horizon parallel to the shore - never veering or glancing side to side. Her honey-blonde hair was meticulously covered with a white baseball hat and her ponytail swayed from within the crescent formed by the one-size-fits-all strap in the back. Her bikini top was perfectly proportioned to expose and conceal her young but smallish perfectly formed cone-shaped breasts. Her long, lean torso swayed side to side as her hips moved, placing one foot in front of the other in rhythmic locomotion. Her matching bikini bottom just covered the interior portions of her butt cheeks, exposing the crescent creases where the top of her lean thighs was delineated just above her faint older tan line. She held the large loop of her beach bag handle over her shoulder and held her cell phone in her other hand as she walked with never a passing glance except to the horizon ahead of her. She wore no fingernail or toenail polish and no sunglasses. She seemed the kind of natural woman that the old man always wanted in his youth, and he didn't capture a single digital picture of her with his camera as she strolled by. He simply beheld her honest reality.
His mind reflected to the old popular song from his day, "The Girl from Ipanema", as he let go a strange sigh from deep within his lungs. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath. There still is beauty in the world, he thought to himself.
The waves came in and rolled out. Kids dug holes in the sand with little bright-colored plastic shovels only to have the holes refilled with new deposits from the next wave to come in. Their parents backed them up from the encroaching shoreline, lest they be pulled out to sea. Couples laying side-by-side up on the beach lying flat toward the sun as their faces stole kisses under a towel pulled over their heads in hiding. A circle of old friends from college were busy chatting, laughing and trying to get one of the girls to at least open another beer can for them. Women today don't seem to do those things for guys anymore. She threw a beer can to the tanned guy with his faded orange baseball hat on backwards and wished him good luck as he tried to open that one. Instead, he just got up from his blanket, walked over to her, pulled the ring-tab and spewed the cold brew on her belly button ring. Ah, those playful college days. Weren't they fun?
The old man reached down and clicked his beach chair to recline another notch as the sun arched overhead and was just about to close his eyes when SHE came walking back this way along the same pathway, she had taken to get downwind from where she started. She had her beach bag over the other shoulder and her cell phone in her other hand as she walked and swayed. Few women have that natural female sway today, he noticed. You know, the one caused by the different angles of the female pelvic bone? She had that sway/strut in spades, and it was naturally smooth like poetry in motion. The old man took a breath, but his lungs were already full as he had forgotten to exhale from the last breath. He reached for his camera. He wanted to record this creature of feminine grace, beauty and style. He trained his lens on this lovely vision and fired a shot every second making sure to refocus as she moved across his field of view. She seemed not to notice and continued walking along with her perfect feet leaving her perfect footprints in the wet sand. He couldn't wait to get those images home and upload them to his large-screen computer monitor.
The old man put his camera away into the bag keeping it from the sand and the wind - big hazards for all cameras, clicked his chair back, took a big breath, closed his eyes and partially drifted-off to the rhythmic music of crashing waves. He'd been coming to this and beaches like this with the same paperback novel always stayed in the bag. He was never going to finish it. It was certain that he'd see nothing better than that the rest of the day or week. He drifted off into a light sleep protected from the direct afternoon sun by the beach umbrella and from everything else because he was just an old man that nobody knew. The sun's warmth was better than a blanket.
He didn't know how long he had been asleep, but there was a strange, uncomfortable coolness in his body that woke him up. He sat up, raised his chair as if on automatic pilot, took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. The strange coolness was a shadow cast across his torso. As he looked up, his heart skipped... it was SHE.. HER. That girl. The girl standing over him with her arms crossed over her breasts and a calm expression on her face. Her voice was sweet violins as she spoke, "I saw and heard your camera clicking as you were taking my picture several times when I walked along the beach earlier today. You're not some kind of pervert, are you? A subversive paparazzi? Are you going to take those photos and go whack-off somewhere later in front of your computer? I'll bet you do."
