The complex was quiet, the paths dark, only one woman swam laps in the pool. I slipped into the hot tub, a plastic glass of wine by my elbow and wondered when my frenzy might subside.
She'd been especially immodest that evening. Before she'd left at the dinner hour, she'd primped and primed herself, stripping out of tailored slacks and conventional blouse revealing functional underwear, and then, at an adagio pace, those most beautiful breasts, silky globes adorned by ample circles of tawny color and, in the middle, those marvelous nuclei, protruding from the roundness. She'd pranced through her routine as if performing for me. Reappearing after her shower, her short midnight hair dripping. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to see a towel surrounding her hips. I watched as she dried her hair, made her face, selected the dress, a floral pattern of dazzling hues, strapless of course, all the better to display the orbs of desire. Her back to me, she discarded the towel, stepped into a pair of panties, brief but not ludicrously so, slid the frock over her shoulders, deftly zipped the back. She acquired her purse for the evening, placed wallet, keys and lipstick in it, and was out the door.
In the interim, I put a dinner from the market in the oven, opened the bottle of inexpensive Merlot I'd been saving for this Friday evening, watched a DVD, read a book. Perhaps I dozed, but when she came home, not long after midnight, I was instantly alert. She'd brought her date home and after she got him a glass of water and put her iPod into the dock I heard the strains of romantic jazz. On the sofa they sat, distant from each other, conversing. I watched his assault, a hand on the shoulder, a slight turning to better face her. Scarcely restrained at first, she might have been resisting, but when he bent towards her she raised her lips, she allowed him a kiss. That activity took the better part of five minutes, and eventually his hands began to explore her ear, neck, and then, at long last, he grasped a breast. Through the fabric he fondled it, and then he removed the dress without any resistance from her. His mouth went to one of the nipples, I watched as the other crinkled in pleasure and anticipation. Her hand traveled to his chest, leg, lap. She implored him for a favor, he rose and removed shirt and trousers. As he stood before her, she caressed his rod through the boxers, pulled them down over his hips, licked the tip, took the glans into her lips, just the head at first, then further until nearly the entire shaft was enclosed within the wetness of her mouth. With a hand, she stroked the nut sack, sending shivers through him. As she knelt on the sofa, her rear end toward me, her knees apart, I could see darkness staining the fabric of her panties. It was then that she stood beside him, pressing her body against his, and the pair migrated to the darkened bedroom. Most of an hour passed, and before two o'clock they returned to the living room. She was wearing a thin kimono, he put his discarded clothes on. One final kiss, the promise that he'd call her, and she fastened the lock behind him. The light in the living room was dimmed to a glow, she went back to the bed room, presumably to slumber.
Realizing the evening was over I sprawled on the bed, but the remnants in my memory of what I'd witnessed that evening prevented sleep's arrival. After twenty-five minutes I decided staring at the ceiling was fruitless, got my swim trunks on, walked to the hot tub.
I reclined, enjoying the heat of the water contrast with the coolness of the Northern California night, thought about other times I'd watched her in various states of dress and undress, passion and apathy. How, I wondered, could she allow me to witness her so indifferently? Or, was it possible that she wasn't even aware of my presence?
I heard the padding of feet on the cement behind me, the dripping of water on concrete, the panting of breath. The swimmer slid into the hot tub two yards from me, I caught the glimpse of a blue bathing suit, abundant yet proportionate breasts, and then, the face. It was her!
"Oh, you're the pervert," she exclaimed.
"Excuse me?" I evaded.
"The pervert. The guy who watches me in my condo." The tone in her voice, the expression on her face didn't exhibit alarm or pique, but the words she employed certainly were upsetting. What to do? Should I deny it? Just leave before it got ugly? I took the third fork in the road.
"Well, you could close your drapes, you know."
"Sure I could, Perve, but then you wouldn't get to watch. Don't worry about it, I'm a tease. I like being looked at. You like watching, don't you? At these?" She lifted her tits, more of the roundness rose above the trimming of her suit. I made no reply to her accusation, it seemed any response I gave could be misconstrued, but that didn't stop her from continuing her thread. "You like to take pictures, too, don't you? How many did you take tonight?" Again, I balked, but she demanded, "Come on, a hundred?"
"More like a dozen." The actual truth was somewhere between the two estimates, but I was still uncertain of my position.
"Huh! I thought sure I'd be worth more than that. And you've been watching me for more than two weeks now. How many do you have, total?"
"Maybe a couple hundred."
"Now that's better. Put them on the Internet yet?"
"Of course not."
"Good, that could have got you in trouble." Apparently my demeanor still was less than positive. "Oh, don't look so wretched, it's okay. My name's Audrey," she said, and we shook hands. "What's your name, Perve?"
"Milt."
"Milt. Short for Milton? It fits you. You're geekish. I mean that in a nice way. If you don't want to call me Audrey, you can call me Tease. That's short for 'cock-teaser,' which I am. You moved in about a month ago, right?"
"Yes, that's right." We both lived on the third floor of an adults only condo complex in the South Bay, just west of San Jose. The complex had ten or twelve buildings, each with ten compartments. From my condo, obviously, I had a great view of Audrey's place, her living room directly across from mine, her bedroom also adjacent. Our windows were, perhaps, thirty feet from each other. "How long have you lived here?"
"Now that's a long story. You going to let me have a drink of your wine?" I handed her my cup. "We moved in twelve years ago. My ex and I, we'd been married then for eight or nine years, I guess. Jim wasn't a California native, he came from the East Coast, I grew up in the East Bay. Back in the 'Nineties, like everyone else, we both went from job to job with hardware and then Internet companies. He kept getting bumped up until he was a director someplace, I made it up to marketing manager. We were good to each other, for my thirtieth birthday he gave me a boob job." Another shake of the orbs. "Then the dot.com bust hit, and I was out on my ass. He kept his job, but that started the slide. I couldn't find any kind of a position that paid anything, and he told me he was tired of supporting me. So I wound up getting a part-time position at Borders. They found out I was literate, and that's about all the qualifications they needed. So there I was with all that time on my hands, and he's flying around the country doing deals, and, well . . . He didn't really mind when he found out, and he was getting his own on the side I found out later, but we started going downhill. We kept it together, more or less, for four years, and then he decided he was going to take a job back East, and I just didn't want to go. We were never angry with each other, just bored, and our divorce was easy. He let me keep the condo, all I have to do is pay him his share as rent, and in another six or seven years I'll have it paid off. They've bumped me up and up at Borders, and now I've got a job on the regional staff, I don't have to work weekends or nights, not too bad for a country girl." During the story she finished off the wine, but otherwise hardly took a breath. She waved the glass at me, "Got any more?"
"Sorry, I only brought the glass down."
"No problem. I've got a bottle of white in my refrigerator, I'll get it. Don't leave, okay?" and I watched her cute butt stroll off. I waited for at least ten minutes, and started to figure that she was teasing me, waiting in her living room for me to give up, but then I saw her returning in the murkiness. "Sorry I was so long, but I had to go really bad. I always do after a real good screw like Don gave me tonight. Give me your glass. Okay, so I told you my story, you tell me yours." She relaxed in the tub, big enough for thirty people and often holding that many, and waited.
"Not all that much to tell. I'm a software engineer . . ." "I knew you were a geek!" ". . . work for Avilant, grew up in New York State, came out here and graduated from Berkeley. Got married, the divorce was final last week. No kids, thankfully."
"Was she screwing around?"
"Yes." My mind flashed to that strange night six months before when I found her at the neighbor's house, wrapped in my supposedly best friend's arms.
"Were you?"
"No, never, not once."
"Sorry about that." The tone was empathetic, yet had a taste of that's-the-way-it-goes-why-are-you-pitying-yourself. Or, perhaps, I was just imposing some of my late night, solitary conversations on her words. "You like it here?"
"I do. Great facilities, with the pool and hot tub and all. Seems like nice people."
"We are. Wait till the Christmas party. And Fourth of July."
We floated for awhile, each keeping to our own side of the submerged bench, but finally she had to break the silence. "So when was the first time you got a look at me?"
I hesitated, she gave me a demanding look. "Maybe three weeks ago. You were lying on your bed, uhhhh . . ." "Masturbating?" ". . . yeah, and your light was on, and I was able to watch you from my deck."
"Take any pictures that night?"
