When the sultry masseuse leaned for the bottle of oil, he caught the sides of her breasts, like a model in one of the classier men’s magazines, but he also saw enough of her face…
Harvard, he realized. And they’re about to…
—after a few moments, the masseuse hopped up, laughing, then quickly closed the curtains as if her partner had casually mentioned that it might be a good idea. How’s that for some bum luck? Fanshawe thought, frustrated and now painfully aroused; he grew light-headed when he considered what he’d be missing. But at least the pair of lovers seemed to have recovered from their gory shock on the trails.
Now his crude excitement left him disordered. I’m such a scumbag! he yelled at himself, but only continued to manipulate the glass. Through a careless curtain gap, he zoomed in a young brunette wearing only panties; she stood before a narrow, full-length mirror, and seemed to be grinning at what she saw: wide hips and a flat stomach; long, sleek legs; small breasts that swooped upward, topped by dense nipples. The woman’s grin deepened; next, she drew her hands up her abdomen, cupped her breasts, then began to vise each nipple between forefinger an thumb…
Fanshawe made an aggravated fist with his free hand, his self-disgust simmering. Scumbag… Pervert…
He moved the viewing circle past several dark windows on the second floor, then stopped when the last of them went alight. He held the glass fast, waiting, heart thudding. No movement revealed itself, yet Fanshawe seemed to sense that patience, as far as this window was concerned, would be well rewarded. The room appeared smaller than the others; he thought he detected heather-green carpet, then walls papered in flowery, neutral tones. In a split-second, then, a shape strode past. Fanshawe only made out jeans and a light top, but he knew it was a woman.
Patience, patience, he insisted.
The shape returned, and a hot breath suddenly seemed trapped in Fanshawe’s chest. Now the woman was bereft of jeans and top, and was skimming off her panties and bra. Of all the women he’d spied on tonight, this woman possessed the most exorbitant curves. But her back was to him. Was she getting something from a closet?
He couldn’t tell, and the lower angle blocked all detail of her from the shoulders up; he could only tell her hair was not blond but lighter than brunet.
It was then that she turned, offering a delectable side-glance. At once Fanshawe’s wooziness doubled. The woman’s breasts were heavy but high, her waist fatless. A tuft of butterscotch public hair showed. Next, she turned only a trifle, such that Fanshawe could see the large, dark circles of her nipples and the jutting papillae. He zoomed only to be astonished to near disbelief. These optics are incredible.
It was uncanny how closely the looking-glass could bear in on an image. Just then, the unknowing woman’s nipple nearly filled the viewing field. Every detail was there before his eye, the stark demarcation of the nipple’s rim against the white flesh of the breast, even the finest hair follicles, and even the papilla’s lactation ducts. It was akin to microscopy… But—
Was she about to lean over?
Fanshawe backtracked the zoom to bring the entire window back into frame.
Yeah… Contact lenses…
The woman was leaning slightly, finger on one hand widening her eyelids while those of her other hand slipped out the lenses. It was during this pose that Fanshawe received his most vivid shock of the night. The woman was absolutely voluptuous, and now he could see her face.
It was Abbie.
The sudden noise spun him abruptly around like someone caught by surprise on a barstool. He’d heard a dog growl.
He stood frozen, staring into the clearing. What he noticed first was the old rain barrel, but it almost looked as though it were shimmering. Some aspect of the moonlight seemed to over-substantiate details much in the same way as the looking-glass. Everything he saw—the high grasses and wild flowers, the small stones on the ground, and even the dirt’s grit—looked excessively crisp. As for the barrel, even from yards away he easily detected the pits and water-damage grooves of its body beneath its protective coat.
But as he might expect, there was no dog.
Not this shit again.
It hadn’t sounded as precise as when he’d heard it earlier that day—just before the scream. It only took a few moments for him to feel sure there was no dog, but remembering how Eldred Karswell’s body had been found didn’t afford much relief. What IS this? he wondered, close to being angered. I’m hearing growling dogs, for God’s sake. But there’d be other evidence of a dog in the vicinity, wouldn’t there? Panting, moving through the brush, etc.? There’d been none of that. I CAN’T be hearing things, can I? He could only hope that the sound had carried from far away, via some fluke he didn’t understand. When he was fully convinced that no dog was present, his lust took him back to previous activities.
Abbie…
He lined the glass right back up on her window, but—
Damn it!
It stood dark now.
Here, his id railed. Naked, she’d proved even more alluring that he’d imagined; her body had stunned him; the prospect of looking at her again filled him with an edgy thrill. But even before he’d seen that her window was now dark, the more decent side of his character groaned at him, How low can I get? I’m peeping on a woman I’ve got a date with! Some force tried to urge him to put the looking-glass away, but he never quite got to that point. I’m a scumbag peeping-tom loser… He noticed several other windows still lit, but as he would put the glass back to his eye—
The minuscule alarm on his Brietling watch began to beep, signaling midnight.
More self-scorn rained down on him. My God, it’s midnight already. I wasted the whole night up here. Looking in windows, eyeballing nude women behind their backs. What a piece of shit I am. When he considered Dr. Tilton’s reaction, he couldn’t have felt more crushed. He could almost see her ice-cold face hanging right there before him like a semi-palpable shadow, not frowning but simply blank, which was much worse.
He presumed to leave at once, his watch still beeping its electronic tolls. But then he was wincing, struggling against the beggardly temptation. Leave! Leave this hill right now and never come back! Only low-lifes do this, only perverts and dirt-bags! but even as this bleak truth socked home, his hand raised the looking-glass to his eye—
All right, damn it… This is it, just one more minute and then I go back to the hotel, and I will never do this again…
There were two odd things that he immediately recognized, but the order of the recognition reversed. In only that short period of time, all the remaining lit windows of the Wraxall Inn had gone out, almost as if they’d been extinguished simultaneously. A sweep of the glass showed him that the rest of the town, too, seemed much darker than before…