Pierre could not stop staring at her. She was an older woman; she'd never see 40 again and had gray streaks in her rich chestnut hair. She did not look like the sort who paid much attention to herself: no make-up, just a t-shirt, shorts, socks and tennis shoes. But there was something about her . . . maybe it was the creamy smoothness of her slightly lined and fair complexion . . . the bright green of her eyes . . . Perhaps it was something in the way she carried herself and moved, something hard to describe but unmistakably sensuous.
Or maybe he was just imagining things.
In the magazine section of the Presston Public Library, he leafed through a recent Atlantic but could not make himself concentrate. That woman repeatedly distracted him. She had a good figure for a woman her age: not too slim but not plump or saggy either. She wore no bra and her t-shirt showed breasts about the size of grapefruits, firm and perky, and she had a nice butt, one that jutted out, was well rounded but not fat. Of average height, her pale legs were nice but had just a touch of cellulite on the thighs.
The two of them were in the magazine section, an area with softly padded chairs and squat tables. There were three other people in that same section: a skinny older guy with glasses, a fat Hispanic man with a wispy mustache and crew cut and a good-looking young blonde woman. The last was actually prettier than the woman who had caught his attention and held it; she looked like she worked out and she was wearing make-up.
Yet it was that brown-haired, creamy-skinned woman that he just could not stop looking at. She pulled at his attention like a hook lodged in a fish. Their eyes met and she smiled, showing off the dimples in her cheeks. She looked back down at her own magazine and Pierre tried to do the same. He looked up at her again: her eyes were focused on her reading. Then she got up and put her magazine, a current one because it was still encased in its plastic folder, back onto the racks. She disappeared into the book stacks.
But not from Pierre's mind. He thought about what it would be like to touch her, just touch her face with his hand, feel her skin, then hold her, kiss her . . . Oh, he shouldn't even be thinking like this! He was a married man; a happily married man. He loved his wife Leianna and would never cheat on her.
In the fiction section, Flo happened on Erica Jong's novels. Fear of Flying was there, its cover cracked and pages worn. Flo smiled at fond memories of that book heating her blood in that long-ago time of sex-obsessed teenaged virginity.
Her thoughts swerved back to that man who seemed to look at her a lot. Was he staring at her? Or was she just imagining it? It seemed that every time she looked at him, their eyes met. She was confused because she did not know how she should feel about it. A prickling of fear ran down her spine and she wondered if he might be dangerous. He did not look like a creep but she had read and heard enough about rapists and stalkers and other bad guys to know there was no particular way they looked. Of average height and build, he was a handsome man about her own age, bespectacled with longish, graying hair.
Strolling through the stacks, Flo doubled back to the Erica Jong books and pulled out Parachutes & Kisses, one she had not read but knew was erotic like most all of Jong's work and probably hotly erotic.
She took the book back to the library's magazine section and sat in one of vinyl-backed sofa chairs to read it. After a few paragraphs, she looked up. He was looking at her. Again a faint chill of fear ran through her as she looked back at the book. She ordered herself to concentrate and she did, reading several pages in succession. When she looked back up she saw that he was gone.
Perhaps she should feel relieved, she told herself. But she did not know what she felt.
***
There she was again. Pierre was glancing through a book on the Civil War when she came into his view and instantly tore his attention away from the history book. As usual, they were in the magazine section of the Presston Library with its comfortable chairs. She was walking among the racks of magazine holders, looking from one to another. She wore a pair of long jeans this time and a white T-shirt with some sort of drawing on it and a pair of sneakers. Again no make-up. Her hair seemed straighter than it had been before, more deliberately styled around her face. Her attention turned from the racks to the tables. Her jeans were not especially tight but they showed off the way her ass seemed to jut out and Pierre felt a warm stirring in his loins. She apparently saw what she was after for she picked up a magazine, then sat down to peruse it.
