After Midnight

And not the stranger.

Where is he?

This time, I was extra careful crossing the room. My feet hit nothing. As I neared the door, I put a hand forward. Soon, my fingers touched the cool glass.

I eased closer, peering out.

Still no sign of him.

When my breasts met the glass, I stopped. This was about as close to the door as I could get without bumping my nose or forehead.

I stared out.

Where’d he go?

He didn’t seem to be in the pool, and he obviously wasn’t standing nearby on the concrete or lawn.

Maybe he’d gone away.

Maybe he’s already in the house.

The chill from the glass, seeping through my robe, was making my nipples ache. I eased back a little to get away from it.

The glass in front of my face had fogged up, so I wiped it with my hand.

And that’s when I saw him.

He was in the pool, after all.

Maybe he’d been below the surface for a while. Or maybe he’d been floating somewhere that I couldn’t see him.

Anyway, there he was.

He drifted on his back near the middle of the pool, his arms spread out, his legs apart. He didn’t move a muscle. The water, calm and almost motionless itself, rippled around him, turned him slowly, eased him along as if it had a vague destination for him but wasn’t in any hurry.

His wet skin shone like silver in the moonlight.

He looked asleep.

He was probably awake, though, feeling the lift of the water beneath him, enjoying its cool lick, relishing the warm breezes drifting over the regions of his skin that weren’t below the surface.

He looked as if he might be waiting for a lover to come, drawn to him by his open naked body, lured by the invitation of the pillar of flesh that stood tall and ready, shiny in the moonlight.

What if it’s me?

What if he’s waiting for me?

He wants me, knows I’m watching, thinks he can lure me out of the house.

You’ve got another think coming, buster. You can wave that thing in the air till hell freezes over, or IT does. I’m not stepping one foot outside.

Just because he looked beautiful in the moonlight didn’t mean he wasn’t a rapist, a killer, a madman.

There had to be something wrong with him. A normal person doesn’t sneak out of the woods in the middle of the night, strip naked and go for a dip in the swimming pool of a total stranger.

Maybe he knows Charlie or Serena and they told him it’s okay.

That hadn’t occurred to me before.

But it seemed highly unlikely. Virtually impossible. For one thing, they wouldn’t give someone permission to use the pool in their absence without telling me about it. After all, I’d be here and take him for an intruder.

For another thing, I knew all their friends. The man in the pool wasn’t one of them.

I didn’t think so, anyway.

It was hard to tell exactly what his face looked like, but I was pretty sure that a body as fine as his didn’t belong to anyone I’d ever seen around the house or pool.

Serena and Charlie were sociable people. They did like to invite friends over for pool parties. But I was the only one with permission to use it when they were away. That’s another reason I knew this guy didn’t belong here.

Nobody but me was allowed in the pool when they weren’t home.

As far as I knew, anyway.

And I knew plenty. I’d been living over the garage for three years, and I could see the pool from my windows.

People just didn’t show up and start using it. Whenever I’d seen anyone at the pool, Serena or Charlie or both of them had been there, too.

Of course, I hadn’t spent all my time watching for pool activity. Things might’ve gone on, now and then, that I didn’t know about.

But not much.

I’ve seen squirrels, raccoons, deer and other animals come out of the woods to drink at the pool. I’ve watched Charlie swim his laps at dawn when he probably assumed I was asleep. I’ve even observed the times, fairly often in the summer, when Serena and Charlie went skinny-dipping late at night. They kept the pool lights off, of course, and spoke in whispers or not at all. Whenever they used the pool that way, they always ended up making love. They did it right out in the open, so they must’ve figured I was asleep or blind. Whereas, actually, I happened to be looking out my window.

I was looking out my window more than anyone would’ve guessed, but I’d never found a stranger in the pool.

Not until tonight.

He’d hardly moved at all in the past few minutes. Just drifted this way and that on his back. I began to wonder if maybe he’d fallen asleep. If asleep, he must’ve been having a doozy of a dream.

The telephone rang.

After midnight, and it suddenly let out a loud jangle in the silence and darkness of the den.

I jumped and yelped.

Out on the pool, the stranger’s head jerked sideways in the water. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew he was staring straight at me.

4

THE PHONE CALL

Not that he could see me.

If you’re in real darkness and someone else is out in the moonlight, he doesn’t stand a chance of spotting you.

But I felt his eyes on me.

I flinched as the phone rang again.

A phone isn’t meant to ring that late at night. It scares you. Even if you’re not alone in the house and spying on a prowler, the ringing rips through your nerves.

Friends don’t call after nine. Not unless there’s an emergency.

It rang again, and I flinched again.

Out in the pool, the man rolled over, turned and started gliding toward me with his head up.

The phone rang again as I took slow backward steps away from the glass door.

Why did it have to be so loud?

I knew he could hear it. Maybe not this particular phone, but a general clamor. I’d been swimming in the pool myself, sometimes, when people called. Even with the doors and windows shut, you could hear rings and chirps and warbles and tweets from all over the house. I don’t even know how many phones Serena had, but at least five— maybe seven or eight. It was a big house, and there were phones in nearly every room.

The only answering machine was in the den.

With me.