of the slats. Creepy as it felt to be spying on oneself, so to speak, I was able to verify that nothing could be seen in there except that the light was on; no doubt Margie making ready for bed.
What must it be like, I couldn't help wondering, to be that sicko bastard snooping on unsuspecting people as they washed their crotches and wiped their asses? I found myself—I'm tempted to say
watched
myself—returning to the street and strolling as if casually across the Court toward that light from 1011, assuring myself that in good-neighborly fashion I was making certain that nothing was amiss over there, but at the same time realizing, with a thrill of dismay, that what I might really be about to do was ...
Wearing only her underpants, slim Ethel Bailey stood at her bathroom window, facing it's curtained and unlighted counterpart across the shrubberied aisle in 1013 (it's floor plan the mirror image of 1011's). Eyes closed, thin lips mischievously smiling, head turned aside like an ancient-Egyptian profile and chin out-thrust in amused, faux-modest challenge, she cupped her small breasts in her hands as if in presentation and swiveled her upper torso slightly from side to side, the better to display them. As I watched from behind a small cypress, she then slid one hand down across her flat belly and into the front of her jay-blue undies, moved it around inside there, and twitched her pelvis as if to the beat of some silent music. Turned herself hind-to; flexed and unflexed her skinny buttocks practically on the windowsill as she worked her panties down! Hot-faced with appall at both of us, I beat as hasty a retreat as prudence allowed. Was relieved indeed to see no one else out enjoying the night air. Hoped to Christ Jim Smythe wasn't checking for prowlers from his front window.
Already in bed, sitting propped against it's king-size headboard and working her Sunday
Times
crossword puzzle while she waited for me to join her, "Where've
you
been?" Margie asked, in a tone of mock-petulant amusement, when I came in. "Out peeping on the neighbors?"
"Nobody out there worth peeping at," I declared as lightly as I could manage, and moved past her to the bathroom to hide my flushed face. "All the hot stuff's right here in Ten-Ten."
"Yes, well," she called back—playfully, to my immeasurable relief. "It
is
a bit sticky in here. Maybe turn the ceiling fan on when you come back in?"
I did, having undressed, washed up, brushed teeth, peed (uncomfortably conscious of the window virtually at my elbow), and donned a short-sleeved pajama top—and found that Margie had already shed hers and set aside her puzzle, expectantly. At that period of our lives, we Mannings still made love at least a couple of times a week (the so-clinical phrase "had sex" was not in as general use back then as nowadays, and never between ourselves), most often in the mornings, but also and usually more ardently at bedtime or even on a foul-weather weekend afternoon. That night, as the low-speed overhead fan moved light air over our skin and I was simultaneously stirred and shamed by the un-expungeable image of Sam Bailey's naked wife, we came together more passionately than we had done for some while. Entwined with her then in spent contentment, guilty-conscienced but enormously grateful for our happy and after-all-faithful marriage, I wondered briefly—and unjealously—whom my wife might have been fantasizing as
her
lover while we two went at it.
But "Wow," she murmured in drowsy languor. "That night sky of yours must've been some turn-on. You'll have to try it more often." "
You're
my turn-on," I assured her—dutifully, guiltily, but nonetheless sincerely as we disconnected our satisfied bodies and turned to sleep.
And there You pretty much have it, make of it what You will. Relieved both as self-appointed chronicler and as a prevailingly moral man to put that discreditable aberration behind me, I wish I could follow it now with a proper dramatic climax
What must it be like, I couldn't help wondering, to be that sicko bastard snooping on unsuspecting people as they washed their crotches and wiped their asses? I found myself—I'm tempted to say
watched
myself—returning to the street and strolling as if casually across the Court toward that light from 1011, assuring myself that in good-neighborly fashion I was making certain that nothing was amiss over there, but at the same time realizing, with a thrill of dismay, that what I might really be about to do was ...
Wearing only her underpants, slim Ethel Bailey stood at her bathroom window, facing it's curtained and unlighted counterpart across the shrubberied aisle in 1013 (it's floor plan the mirror image of 1011's). Eyes closed, thin lips mischievously smiling, head turned aside like an ancient-Egyptian profile and chin out-thrust in amused, faux-modest challenge, she cupped her small breasts in her hands as if in presentation and swiveled her upper torso slightly from side to side, the better to display them. As I watched from behind a small cypress, she then slid one hand down across her flat belly and into the front of her jay-blue undies, moved it around inside there, and twitched her pelvis as if to the beat of some silent music. Turned herself hind-to; flexed and unflexed her skinny buttocks practically on the windowsill as she worked her panties down! Hot-faced with appall at both of us, I beat as hasty a retreat as prudence allowed. Was relieved indeed to see no one else out enjoying the night air. Hoped to Christ Jim Smythe wasn't checking for prowlers from his front window.
Already in bed, sitting propped against it's king-size headboard and working her Sunday
Times
crossword puzzle while she waited for me to join her, "Where've
you
been?" Margie asked, in a tone of mock-petulant amusement, when I came in. "Out peeping on the neighbors?"
"Nobody out there worth peeping at," I declared as lightly as I could manage, and moved past her to the bathroom to hide my flushed face. "All the hot stuff's right here in Ten-Ten."
"Yes, well," she called back—playfully, to my immeasurable relief. "It
is
a bit sticky in here. Maybe turn the ceiling fan on when you come back in?"
I did, having undressed, washed up, brushed teeth, peed (uncomfortably conscious of the window virtually at my elbow), and donned a short-sleeved pajama top—and found that Margie had already shed hers and set aside her puzzle, expectantly. At that period of our lives, we Mannings still made love at least a couple of times a week (the so-clinical phrase "had sex" was not in as general use back then as nowadays, and never between ourselves), most often in the mornings, but also and usually more ardently at bedtime or even on a foul-weather weekend afternoon. That night, as the low-speed overhead fan moved light air over our skin and I was simultaneously stirred and shamed by the un-expungeable image of Sam Bailey's naked wife, we came together more passionately than we had done for some while. Entwined with her then in spent contentment, guilty-conscienced but enormously grateful for our happy and after-all-faithful marriage, I wondered briefly—and unjealously—whom my wife might have been fantasizing as
her
lover while we two went at it.
But "Wow," she murmured in drowsy languor. "That night sky of yours must've been some turn-on. You'll have to try it more often." "
You're
my turn-on," I assured her—dutifully, guiltily, but nonetheless sincerely as we disconnected our satisfied bodies and turned to sleep.
And there You pretty much have it, make of it what You will. Relieved both as self-appointed chronicler and as a prevailingly moral man to put that discreditable aberration behind me, I wish I could follow it now with a proper dramatic climax
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