My Neighbor's Spa

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This is a completed four-chapter novella that will complete posting by mid August 2019.

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*****

"You have to take the Jaguar in again?"

"Expensive cars like this are high maintenance, Sandra. They have to be fine tuned. But it's worth it in the ride."

"You must really like the ride of that car then, Glen. You use every excuse you can to get out on the road in that Jaguar. And I swear that a third of that time it's to take the car in for servicing."

"Just every 3,000 miles. It's what's recommended in the manual. Did Marty have anything interesting to say?"

I'd purposely waited to come to tell Sandra I was off to the car dealer's until after she and our neighbor, Marty, had finished chatting and he'd gone back in his house. Marty made me a bit uncomfortable. He was always giving me "that look" when we encountered each other in the yard, and that, along with this Neal thing, was making me uneasy—uneasy because I was getting an arousal buzz out of it.

Marty's house was on the corner, but it faced the other road. The back of his house was pointed to the side of our front yard. The lots were heavy in trees and foliage and he kept the back of his house and his backyard looking good, with a patio and flower gardens, so it didn't really seem we were looking at the backside of anyone's life. Also, our house sat on a pretty steep rise back on the lot, so his house really backed on our driveway, which curved downhill away from our house.

I went back to the garage and backed my XK coupe out, turned it in the parking apron, and let it roll to the bottom of the driveway. I waved at Sandra, standing in a cloud of lily of the valleys, tugging on her heavy gardening gloves. She waved warily back at me with the garden trowel she'd been using to try to keep the invasive lily of the valley plants from choking out the phlox bordering the driveway.

I was already nervous, trembling and both castigating myself for doing this at all and, at the same time, congratulating myself for doing it again.

Sandra wouldn't understand, of course. But the pity is that she might not be all that shocked or even care too much. It wasn't that her daddy had bought me for her even though he'd encouraged our marriage along. I was a star in his company before Sandra and I met and started dating, and, not having had any sons, I'm sure Sandra's dad had been looking for someone to step into his business when he retired.

Sandra's lack of passion mostly was because there never had been all that much of a spark between us. She seemed happy enough with life, but it was a low-expectation happiness. We led a good life, really. "Damn, we lead a pampered life," I muttered, as I patted the dashboard on my new Jaguar coupe. But Sandra was the type who enjoyed watching the easy roll of waves on the sea, whereas I tuned into the 4th of July fireworks over Manhattan island.

I'd been a good boy for the five years we'd been married, though. A really good boy, I thought. And the manual really did say that the Jag should go in for an oil change and a checkup every 3,000 miles. But even I had to admit that it was getting a little difficult to think up excursions that put 3,000 miles on the car every five or six weeks.

* * * *

"We'll get right to your car in a few minutes, Mr. Stevens," the service supervisor said. "Unless you want to leave it and pick it up tomorrow. We can give you a ride home and then bring you back when you want to collect it."

"No thanks, I'll wait. In the customer's lounge."

"Sorry for the wait. We're running a bit behind. Good thing this is the mechanic's late night."

"Yep, a good thing, thanks," I answered. "I'll just be in the customer service lounge."

"There's plenty of coffee ready there—and sodas in the fridge, if you're interested."

"Thanks." I went into the customer lounge and looked around for a good place to put the briefcase down that I'd brought. Someplace not too conspicuous. Over by the lounge chair in the corner, I thought. That done, I came back and stood in front of the big picture window they had between the customer's lounge and the service bays—so the customers wouldn't get the idea the mechanics were sloughing off or doing something nasty to the cars, I supposed.

I sighed when I saw him. Neal. Working on an old, hunter green Jaguar roadster over near the corner. Great looking car. I even knew who owned it. Craig Towers. He was a stockbroker. About ten years older than I was. We played tennis at the club occasionally. He'd come on to me in a subtle way a few months ago in the men's locker room. From the rumors about him, though, I didn't think I had what he wanted. So, I just played dumb and he got jovial and backed off. It didn't seem to affect the casual relationship we had going. The roadster was in pristine condition. I assumed Neal was the one keeping it in that condition. Craig was in pristine condition too, considering his age. So was Neal, for that matter—although he was a lot younger than Craig.

I knew it was getting late in the service shift. I also knew that Neal would be working a late shift tonight. I had studied the patterns. I knew when the showroom closed, and I knew when Neal's shift ended on his late nights.

The service manager appeared on the service floor, and I watched him out of the corner of my eye walk over to Neal and talk to him. I was holding a magazine and pretending to be reading that, but I was really watching the two of them. The manager pointed up to the window where I stood and Neal looked up—almost taking my breath away because of how terrific he looked—and nodded. The manager left and Neal shifted to working on my car.

I watched him at work for nearly half an hour. He was wearing blue coveralls, but they didn't hide his muscular arms and the fluid way he danced around the car, not wasting a step but making every movement look like he was worshipping and babying the Jaguar. And at $90,000 a pop for one of these babies, he certainly should be treating it right. Sandra had just about busted a gut when she found out what I'd paid for that.

But I'd seen Neal walking on the street one day and I was sold in an instant. I had followed him back to this dealership and it didn't take me long to be sold on the sports coupe as well. I thought—and hoped—it was one of their cheaper models, but, when I checked, I saw that I was wrong. I always did have expensive taste. Cost didn't matter in this, though. I would have paid just about anything for the chance to get up close to Neal once I found out he was a mechanic here.

He wasn't handsome, really. But he was sensual and his features were rugged and chiseled—nothing right all by itself, but everything fitting together perfectly. It showed determination and self-confidence. He exuded the sense of a man who got what he wanted. He had that smile that started slow, and by the time he was finished, you were ready to do anything for him that he wanted. And muscles. He was of medium height, but he was muscled up like a gym rat, which, for all I knew, he was. He had striking blue eyes that I wanted to just climb into and almost unruly black hair that flopped down, provocatively in front of his face. Once I got to know him, I saw, as I had suspected would be the case, that he was easygoing but in a steely way that made you want to do whatever he wanted while he was leaving the impression that it was what you wanted.

Neal finished with my car. He looked up and waved at me to indicate he was done, and I did what I could not to melt. I went to the cashier's cage and waited for him to come in with the bill and the keys.

"All done, Mr. Stevens," he said in a cheery deep baritone. He gave me a blue-eyed smile, very friendly. Nothing else in back of it other than pleasing the customer, though. My smile back was more circumspect. I was watching my hand, wondering if I'd be trembling that badly if he handed the keys directly to me. But he didn't. He looked rather apologetically at me and took an oily rag out of his back pocket and wiped his hands, to show me, I'm sure, why he didn't shake my hand or something. The key and the bill went to the cashier, who asked me how I wanted to pay the bill. When I glanced back, Neal was gone.

I paid the bill with a credit card and went out in front of the showroom and stood at the showroom window, waiting for my car to be brought around. It wasn't Neal who brought it around, though. Then I drove off, just down the block, into a strip mall parking lot. I parked and waited. A half hour later, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and punched in the number of the car dealership. It was only about fifteen minutes to the showroom's closing.

"Hi, this is Mr. Stevens. I was just in with my car, and I'm afraid I left my briefcase in the customer's lounge. Is it OK if I come back and get it? It's got some papers I need in the morning. Oh, no bother, I know you're closing. I'll just slip in by the service bay, pick it up, and be gone again in a jiffy. You won't even notice me. Thanks. Yes, I'll be right over."

I clicked off. It would have been best not to leave a briefcase or anything else there, but, who knows, someone might check.

I left my car where it was and walked the block back to the dealership. Everyone inside the showroom was busy closing up. I had counted on that. As I said I would do, I slid inside the doorway by the service bays and then into the customer lounge. I picked up my "lost" briefcase and slipped into a broom closet I'd cased out earlier in the evening. My one worry was that someone would check the closet before closing. I had no idea what I'd say I was doing there. But no one did. Even while I was doing it, I couldn't believe I was taking this risk. I waited for the lights to go out in the lounge, and then I impatiently counted the minutes off for the next twenty.

When I came out of the closet, the only lights that were on were those coming through the glass overlooking the service bays.

I just wanted to watch him. I didn't have any plans beyond that. It wasn't that there ever was any hope—or interest even—at that point for physical contact. I had been really, really careful. And I'd never actually done anything with a guy. I'd only thought about it—and fantasized some of it. I wasn't actually expecting to start anything with Neal. I just wanted to watch him. The way he moved, just the sensuality of him. Just watch and maybe do a little dreaming.

And this was great for watching. As long as I didn't stand too close to the window, there was no way he could see me in the darkened customer lounge. But he was lit up marvelously.

When I had positioned myself, I looked down into the service bays and gasped. The air-conditioning had been turned off. Probably in response to that, Neal had slipped off the top part of his coveralls and let them hang at his side. He'd also pulled off the T-shirt he'd had under that. It was just him, his tanned, muscled, and slightly hirsute torso, as he moved around Craig Tower's Jaguar roadster. Its hood was up and Neal was tinkering under that for minute or two at a time and then moving around to the driver's window and leaning in and starting the engine. Then the engine would die and he'd move around under the hood again.

His muscles rippled as he moved, and I sighed a long sigh of satisfaction. The ruse had been worth it. I was seeing more of him than I had ever imagined I would.

I watched for maybe fifteen minutes before I saw him jerk up as if he'd heard a sound. He put the wrench in his hand down and walked toward the front of the bays. He stopped at a sink and did a quick clean job on his hands, and, I almost croaked, sluiced a couple of cups of water over his head, shook his mane just like he was a lion, and dried his chest and arms off with a towel.

He had black, curly hair on his deeply tanned chest that trailed down a thin line to his flat belly. I felt a little growl forming deep inside me.

He moved on to the front the dealership. When he reappeared, he wasn't alone. Craig Towers was with him, walking in front of him. Neal had a hand on the small of Craig's back.

Within minutes both were fully stripped down to their shoes—Craig's wingtips and Neal's clunky, but oh-so-sexy construction boots, and they were fucking. Craig was solid and gray, thickish, but more in a mature-muscled way than fat. Neal, of course, was just as magnificent as I had dreamed he was. Well-muscled, not too thin, but all muscle. The veins stood out on his arms, having no fat to hide them, and he was thinly covered, not pelted with the black, curly hair on his forearms and thighs, as well as down his chest.

I have no idea what they said beforehand and whether this encounter was as highly orchestrated as had been my design to be the voyeur, but they pretty much got right down to business. They fucked on the hood of Craig's roadster, with the show starting with Craig bent over the hood on his belly and Neal grabbing his hips and fucking him from behind. Later, Neal was laying on his back on the hood, his feet on the ground, and toes of those clunky construction boots rising and falling in rhythm to Craig's rising and falling pelvis as he straddled Neal's hips and had his hands dug in the hair of Neal's pecs.

When they were done, both dressed, Craig got in his roadster, and Neal went out to the front and opened the bay door so Craig could drive away. Then he returned to tinkering under the hood of another car for about half an hour, cleaned up again, turned off the lights, and left.

Through it all, I stood, glued as close to the window between the customer lounge and the service bays as I could. My mouth was hanging open and had long ago gone dry. I hadn't moved, though, not wanting to miss a single thrust or a single silent moan that I couldn't hear through the glass but could only see in the expression on Craig's face as he was being fucked.

I had only intended to watch. I had only thought that I wanted to watch Neal as he moved, that I wanted nothing more from him.

Now, having seen him fucking Craig, I thought maybe being a voyeur wouldn't be enough. And the thought both scared and aroused me.

After another half an hour in the dark, waiting for my breath to return to its normal cadence and my heart to stop beating so quickly, I picked up the briefcase with the far-less-than-important papers in it and started groping my way toward the word "exit" in glowing red above a door and piercing the darkness at the end of the corridor to the customer lounge.

Looking was one thing. Actually doing something was a whole different ball game. I had a cushy deal with Sandra and her father's firm. These would be murky waters. I'd maybe have to bring the Jaguar in for servicing less. Maybe I could wean myself away from that.

All of that went out the window, though, the next Saturday, when I was out trimming some azalea bushes in my front yard and looked over into Marty's backyard. A young man, shirtless, was holding a hose and watering the small garden Marty had planted against the side of his storage shed.

The young man was Neal, the mechanic from the Jaguar dealership.