Take a Look at Me Now
A man not quite thirty-five and his wife a little younger lay on chaises longues poolside. She was eight months into her pregnancy and they were five days into their stay at a three star hotel near the French Mediterranean. The man was lying on his chest, bookmarking his page with his finger and wearing dark glasses. His wife lay on her side, facing him, with her eyes closed.
“She’s still there,” the wife said.
“Who?”
“The girl you keep looking at. I heard you turning to check and I’m telling you she hasn’t left yet.” The girl the wife referred to lay three chaises away, spreading the sun over her chest with tanning oil. Her legs were long for her body and stretched uncrossed along the seat. Her top lay in a ball beside her and her breasts rose only slightly from her chest, her puckered nipples were no larger than a kiss. The girl had come to the hotel with her family, though old enough not to have, and she often turned up alone at the pool to swim, read, or smoke the occasional cigarette.
“I’m looking at you,” the man told his wife.
“Please,” the woman said with disbelief. When she opened her eyes and sat up, her husband turned away.
“Anyway, get a good look at me now because in three seconds you won’t see me at all. I have to go back to the room.”
“No, stay.”
“Nice try, but I have to go back to the room. Help me stand up.” The departing woman kissed the man and her bare feet slapped the pavement as she walked away. When passing before the girl, the man’s wife said hello though neither she nor her husband had spoken to the girl before. The girl lifted her head and returned the greeting with a smile.
Around the pool old women carried their heavy breasts with the same weary pride with which they’d born their children, mothers not much older than he played with their infant daughters in the water, and teens young enough to worry about men his age sat mostly unaware of the paranoia and shame gently stretching their suits.
The man took turns watching these women from behind the safety of his sunglasses and kept tabs on the most interesting among them, but always returned to the nymph stretched along her chair. After another visual tour of the other sirens, he was pleased to see the girl walking his direction. She was taut like a bow string. When she took a step, her flesh quivered just once and held. Before panicking with the realization that she was approaching him, he took a moment to appreciate her slender waist and the stomach recessed above the grin of her bikini elastic. She sat down on the chair his wife had vacated, facing him, her forearms on her knees and her knees, like her lips, slightly parted.
“Hello.” Her silver eyes glittered like the ocean, no doubt from all the time she spent staring at the sea. He returned her greeting and lifted himself on one elbow.
“You’ve been looking at me,” the girl said, without threat or accusation.
“Yes,” he admitted. His suntan hid his blush. “I’m sorry.”
Her legs opened slightly further while she asked why he was sorry. Smiling benignly, he shrugged.
“Then may I ask why you’re watching me?”
The man paused and sat straighter. “Because you’re beautiful.” He knew women found ‘cute’ and ‘pretty’ easy to resist, but distrusting ‘ beautiful’ was difficult because most believed it to be true.
“Aren’t you curious?”
“About…”
“About what being with me would feel like.” The man responded with a laugh that sounded like a gasp and then fell silent.
“I like you,” she said. “You’re not too complicated. I’ll tell you what, if you want to watch a few hot ass porno movies with me, I will be the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen. I’ll do it for me; exciting others excites me; I like making myself an object of obsession. Besides, I consider you a challenge — I know your type and you’re too much a coward to make any advances towards me. I’ll put on a show during the next week that will make the fantasies you’re having of me now seem like nursery rhymes. But if you want more, you’ll have to ask.” The girl waited while he held his silence like a breath, then she stood and moved to the edge of the pool. She dove gracefully from her toes, turned underwater and emerged on her back, guarding her slight smile as she drifted away. The man dropped his glasses beside his towel and jumped in after her. He swam behind her, though did not approach close enough to either touch or speak with her. Following in her wake, he took the water she had passed through into his mouth and swallowed.
The following day the girl, wearing her swimsuit and carrying a towel, strolled past the terrace table where the man and his wife were lunching. The couple stopped chewing and watched the rhythm of her walk.
“She’s cute,” his wife said to him as she waved her fingers to return the smile the younger woman cast at her. The man nodded, pretending to be absorbed by his meal.
“Come on,” she continued, “don’t tell me you don’t find her attractive.”
Shrugging, the man rolled his eyes and watched as if only to please his wife. He saw the girl stand beneath the shower installed beside the pool for rinsing off. The spray melted her beach-blonde hair a shade darker and was obviously cold from the way she gasped when she backed into the stream. She rubbed the bar of soap over the goosebumps covering her body as the water cascaded over her skin and plastered her top to her chest.
“What do you want me to say?” He shook his head at his wife, while he watched the girl tuck the seam of her swimsuit high between the tops of her thighs, exposing skin even the sun had been forbidden to reach. The image sank into the man’s lap
Add comment September 16th, 2010