The Man Who Stared

Pierre could not stop staring at her. She was an older woman; she'd never see 40 again and had gray streaks in her rich chestnut hair. She did not look like the sort who paid much attention to herself: no make-up, just a t-shirt, shorts, socks and tennis shoes. But there was something about her . . . maybe it was the creamy smoothness of her slightly lined and fair complexion . . . the bright green of her eyes . . . Perhaps it was something in the way she carried herself and moved, something hard to describe but unmistakably sensuous.

Or maybe he was just imagining things.

In the magazine section of the Presston Public Library, he leafed through a recent Atlantic but could not make himself concentrate. That woman repeatedly distracted him. She had a good figure for a woman her age: not too slim but not plump or saggy either. She wore no bra and her t-shirt showed breasts about the size of grapefruits, firm and perky, and she had a nice butt, one that jutted out, was well rounded but not fat. Of average height, her pale legs were nice but had just a touch of cellulite on the thighs.

The two of them were in the magazine section, an area with softly padded chairs and squat tables. There were three other people in that same section: a skinny older guy with glasses, a fat Hispanic man with a wispy mustache and crew cut and a good-looking young blonde woman. The last was actually prettier than the woman who had caught his attention and held it; she looked like she worked out and she was wearing make-up.

Yet it was that brown-haired, creamy-skinned woman that he just could not stop looking at. She pulled at his attention like a hook lodged in a fish. Their eyes met and she smiled, showing off the dimples in her cheeks. She looked back down at her own magazine and Pierre tried to do the same. He looked up at her again: her eyes were focused on her reading. Then she got up and put her magazine, a current one because it was still encased in its plastic folder, back onto the racks. She disappeared into the book stacks.

But not from Pierre's mind. He thought about what it would be like to touch her, just touch her face with his hand, feel her skin, then hold her, kiss her . . . Oh, he shouldn't even be thinking like this! He was a married man; a happily married man. He loved his wife Leianna and would never cheat on her.

In the fiction section, Flo happened on Erica Jong's novels. Fear of Flying was there, its cover cracked and pages worn. Flo smiled at fond memories of that book heating her blood in that long-ago time of sex-obsessed teenaged virginity.

Her thoughts swerved back to that man who seemed to look at her a lot. Was he staring at her? Or was she just imagining it? It seemed that every time she looked at him, their eyes met. She was confused because she did not know how she should feel about it. A prickling of fear ran down her spine and she wondered if he might be dangerous. He did not look like a creep but she had read and heard enough about rapists and stalkers and other bad guys to know there was no particular way they looked. Of average height and build, he was a handsome man about her own age, bespectacled with longish, graying hair.

Strolling through the stacks, Flo doubled back to the Erica Jong books and pulled out Parachutes & Kisses, one she had not read but knew was erotic like most all of Jong's work and probably hotly erotic.

She took the book back to the library's magazine section and sat in one of vinyl-backed sofa chairs to read it. After a few paragraphs, she looked up. He was looking at her. Again a faint chill of fear ran through her as she looked back at the book. She ordered herself to concentrate and she did, reading several pages in succession. When she looked back up she saw that he was gone.

Perhaps she should feel relieved, she told herself. But she did not know what she felt.

***

There she was again. Pierre was glancing through a book on the Civil War when she came into his view and instantly tore his attention away from the history book. As usual, they were in the magazine section of the Presston Library with its comfortable chairs. She was walking among the racks of magazine holders, looking from one to another. She wore a pair of long jeans this time and a white T-shirt with some sort of drawing on it and a pair of sneakers. Again no make-up. Her hair seemed straighter than it had been before, more deliberately styled around her face. Her attention turned from the racks to the tables. Her jeans were not especially tight but they showed off the way her ass seemed to jut out and Pierre felt a warm stirring in his loins. She apparently saw what she was after for she picked up a magazine, then sat down to peruse it.

She crossed her legs and uncrossed them. It seemed to Pierre that her hips ground sensuously. She looked across, not toward Pierre, so he saw the profile of her softly featured face. Automatically, he began fantasizing about what it would be like to take her in his arms, to kiss her, to feel her soft skin against his . . . cup his hands around her large breasts, squeeze them gently . . . kiss them reverently, take a nipple in his mouth and work his tongue around it . . .

Suddenly she looked over at him. Their eyes met but she did not smile.

Was he scaring her? Pierre wondered guiltily as her attention went back to her reading material. He certainly did not want to frighten her. He tried to read his book but could only stare dumbly at the words. He snuck another peek at her: she was reading. She licked her lips. Her hips moved around.

A wave of arousal traveled through Pierre's body. He felt his dick get hammer-hard and his balls knot up with the sudden swift fury of a fist clenched in rage. Oh God, how he wanted her! If only he could kiss her, put his arms around her . . . He imagined putting his mouth on hers and her lips delightedly parting, her tongue sliding into his mouth against his teeth and gums, her hand pulling his toward her breast.

He could stand it no longer. He put the book down and headed to the library's men's restroom. There was no way he could even make it to his car. No one was in the restroom and he hurried to one of the stalls, closed the door behind him and came into a handkerchief almost as soon as he touched himself.

Flo flipped through the pages of a Newsweek but she could not be bothered to actually read because her thoughts went back to that guy who seemed to look at her so much. Was he attracted to her? Or was she just flattering herself, imagining something that wasn't there? No, she decided, she wasn't. He desired her. His eyes had that hungry look. As she thought about those eyes and the way they moved over her body, she felt a warm pulse beat in her vagina. Her breathing slowed as an image of the two of them kissing filled her mind. She looked up. He was not there.

Flo was startled by how sharp her pang of disappointment was.

***

She would be disappointed again when she returned to the library about a week later. He was not there. With a brief chuckle at her own foolish vanity, Flo realized that she had gone there primarily to have that stranger look at her. Anyway, it was far from a total loss. A bookworm since she was a small child, Flo always haunted libraries. Now she went through the stacks of the fiction section, pulling out a book here and one there, examining the dust jackets and considering.

A copy of Anaïs Nin's Delta of Venus caught Flo's eye. She had read it years ago and masturbated over some of the poetically told stories. It seemed to her that Nin had brought romance and pornography together in a beautiful synthesis. She took Delta of Venus and headed to the magazine section.

He was there.

She sat down in one of the big comfy chairs a little ways away from him and began thumbing through the book.

Pierre held a copy of U.S. News & World Report on his lap. He finished an article, turned a few pages, then decided to get another magazine.

As he got up, he saw her.

She was just sitting there, engrossed in a book.

He put the magazine back in its place and pulled out a National Geographic but did not expect to concentrate on it and did not. He kept looking at her. She was wearing shorts again. That creamy complexion, those grapefruit-like breasts. Her nipples showed through the t-shirt. He wanted so badly to touch her, if only to touch her face or her hand. The raw physical yearning pulled at him.

Flo glanced over at the guy. Sure enough, he was staring at her. She smiled and went back to Delta of Venus.

Pierre wondered about the look she wore when she smiled at him: was she attracted to him too? No, he told himself, of course not. He shouldn't even think that. If anything, he might be frightening her. That would be awful of him. Nervously, Pierre clasped his hands together and unclasped them. He sighed. But then he looked at her again.

Flo looked up and, still smiling, met the eyes of that man. She wanted to meet him, to get to know him. But what if he really did not want to know her? Flo did not think of herself as having a winning personality. She feared she might turn him off, put an end to this . . . this whatever-it-was altogether.

She closed the book down and, still holding it, went over to sit on a chair across from him. Her mouth went dry. She took a deep breath.

The two of them looked at each other. Flo smiled, a wide, open-mouthed smile.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," the man replied softly.

"My name is Flo," she said.

"Mine is Pierre," he said, his voice still soft.

Flo wondered: had she opened a door or had she closed one?