I had accomplished something re my job. It's not a rare event, but it's rare enough to merit a celebration, even if it was in the middle of the day. I took myself out to a nice restaurant, a little bit on the fancy side one might say, in the heart of Midtown. I went alone, accompanied only by my self-satisfaction of having done something good.
I was planning on a steak, but the daily special was blackened swordfish, and I am a sucker for blackened anything, as long as it's cooked well. I looked up from the menu and noticed a woman eating alone. Now I don't know what it is about the people who seat you in these restaurants, but they kind of save a small section for solitary diners. I was placed in that section.
I sat with my back to the wall, and directly across from me was a single woman, around twenty years younger, also dining alone. The woman was nice looking. She looked just a little sad, but perhaps I was projecting? Her hair was a little flat. She could definitely have benefitted via a visit to a beauty parlor. Her defining features, as far as I was concerned, were that she was alone, attractive, and did not have a gold band on her left hand.
You cannot stare at the woman eating across from you, and like many women she had that female ability to never, ever look at me, even if I was directly across from her. I knew women hear everything and see everything, it's just for the life of me I don't know how they arrange never to be seen doing it. She had a glass of white wine, and she did not finish it. Very female of her, if you ask me.
I enjoy fantasizing on such occasions, trying to fill in the missing details of who exactly was the woman across from me, and what had brought her to lunch at such a restaurant. I decided she had divorced, received a nice settlement, and while she had a job, she was not hurting at all for money. She had kids when she was very young, but they were far away, probably in college given my estimate of her age as being in her very early forties, although late 30s was possible, too.
She now lived alone, was self-sufficient, had lots of women friends, and had no need for men, romance, or sex with men. She had been there, done that. Maybe, however, if the right man came along and somehow met her when she dined alone in a midtown eatery like this one, such as the man currently dining directly across from her, well then, maybe...
My food came and I was bit distracted when a man came with a pepper mill the size of Montana, and another came to offer to grate parmesan cheese on my appetizer of a small dish of pasta, and then a third man brought me my red wine. When I looked up the woman was gone, and the bus boys were clearing her table, erasing any memory of her ever having eaten there or even having existed. Minutes later they were ready for another hungry customer to take her seat.
We had been two anonymous solitary diners in New York City, doubtless never to cross paths again, I was sure. She had intrigued me for some reason. She had an unjustified familiar look. I think what intrigued me though had been the slight sadness around her eyes, if it was indeed sadness. Perhaps that's just the way her face rests and she has always seemed sad, even when she was happy? I enjoyed my lunch and moved on to other thoughts.
A week or so later I was at the gym I go to on occasion and trying to remain healthy before I had to see my doctor for my annual physical. He always asks me if I exercise regularly, and I wanted to be able to say at the least that I exercise occasionally. I had taken a shower, and dressed, and was about to leave the gym when I saw her again, my dining companion of whom I knew nothing at all but for whom I had constructed a fantasy life.
She had used the pool I guess because she had a faint whiff of chlorine about her as we shared the elevator to descend to the exit. We both followed elevator etiquette and did not speak nor even look at each other in the elevator. I of course broke etiquette just a bit, giving her a double take to make sure she was the same woman. She was.
With us both standing in the elevator I was able to enjoy the womanly curves of her body in a way I had not been able to do when I had first seen her in the restaurant. I cursed that the elevator ride was so short. Why couldn't the gym have been on a higher floor?
Like many women who visit a gym, she was wearing yoga pants that were skin tight, and I got to make a close study of her buttocks, which were magnificent. Now that I'm older, I've supplemented my lifelong fascination with a woman's boobs to include her ass as well. It's a sign of maturity, you might say.
As we both exited the gym I lingered in place on the sidewalk, pretending to fiddle with my phone but in fact using the occasion to observe her gait as she walked away. One of the great things about yoga pants is that you can watch all parts of the woman's behind move in synchrony as she walks. On this particular woman the way the parts move I found to be highly sexy.
My suspicions were right. She had a nice wiggle to her walk. I was able to confirm my impression in the elevator that this woman had curves in all the right places, and truly nice curves, at that. My opinion of this woman I would doubtless never see again morphed from pretty to sexy.
As I watched her walk away, I lingered watching her perhaps a bit too long. I was being pretty obvious and strangers might think it was creepy or something. Maybe it even was creepy? I confirmed again, so that there was no doubt, what I had briefly noticed in the elevator. She had an excellent body, a hell of a lot better than my body was, but then I have up to twenty years of age on her.
I thought it was strange to see her again, but strange things happen, and life is chock full of odd coincidences. Anyway, since I had seen her twice, I decided to give her a name, and I decided to call her Joan, of course only in my own mind for the purposes of idle fantasizing.
My construction of Joan's life began to fill out a bit. She lived in Murray Hill, in one of those new buildings whose interiors looked as if they could be the interior of convention hotels. I decided she was a secret exhibitionist, and always kept her blinds up, even when she was undressing for bed or for the shower. Her neighbors would get the occasional delightful peek, if they were looking at her window at just the right time. She would get the thrill of showing herself off just a bit, but with almost no risk at all. She was that kind of girl, I decided, even if I had no basis for thinking such things. Hey, it was my fantasy, right? My fantasies could evolve according to my taste and my rules. It's only reasonable.
Another week passed. I needed a new lamp. I had this fancy Italian lamp, and the lightbulb tended occasionally to flicker, and it drove me up the wall. I confirmed it was a problem intrinsic to the lamp and not the lightbulb. I had money and life is short so I decided to replace the lamp. There are some fancy Italian lamp stores down in SoHo, so that's where I went. SoHo can be annoying because the sidewalks are small and yet the region is packed with high end fashion shoppers and tourists, especially on the weekends.
I was wending my way through the crowds and finally found the safety of the inside of a high-end lamp store. It was the same store that had sold me the original lamp that now flickered annoyingly. I lodged my complaints about the lamp I had bought, received the right level of insincere sympathy, and pretended to be mollified.
The saleswoman, herself quite a cute number but too young for me (although it was fun to fantasize), showed me some nice new lamps, guaranteed not to flicker. I enjoyed looking down her blouse whenever she bent over, which was surprisingly often.
A woman who had recently entered the store caught me looking down the salesgirl's blouse and apparently she was amused by this. She idly said, to nobody in particular, "This store is filled with so many wonderful things to look down ... at." I think I may have blushed.
I looked at the critic and it was the same woman! She was the one to whom I had given the name Joan. She was the solitary diner, the woman at the gym, and now the clever critic at the lighting store. I was startled when I realized it was Joan, the third time in as many weeks I had run into her just by chance.
