After Midnight

3
IN THE WATER

You suddenly couldn’t see him at all. He’d vanished. I stared at where he’d been, but he was gone as if he’d turned invisible.
Not invisible, but black.
The pool looked empty. I knew it wasn’t, though.
I pictured him swimming underwater for a few more seconds, then bursting out, hurling himself onto the pool’s edge and dashing at my door.
The door might slow him down, but it wouldn’t stop him.
I mean, it was glass.
I tried to prepare myself for the shock of a sudden assault.
Don’t scream, just turn around and run like hell.
Go for the kitchen.
Grab one of the butcher knives.
I saw him.
Out near the middle of the pool, the back of his head and then his buttocks slid across the moonlight’s silver path. He seemed to be on his way to the shallow end, doing a leisurely breast stroke.
Not coming for me, after all.
Not yet.
But the pool had tile stairs underwater at a corner of the shallow end. When he came to them, he might climb out.
I stepped a little closer to the glass door.
He didn’t swim toward the stairs. Instead, he kept to the center. At the end of the pool, he stood up. His wet skin gleamed in the moonlight, but only down to his waist. There, the black water cut him off. He looked as if he’d lost his lower body—legs, ass, and the all the rest—as if whacked apart by a terrible sword.
The saber.
I suddenly remembered Charlie’s saber. It hung on hooks above the fireplace in the living room, along with a framed citation that had something to do with the Civil War service of his great-great-grandfather.
The saber was an actual relic of the war.
It hadn’t belonged to Charlie’s ancestor, though; Serena had bought it for him as a Christmas present.
We’d all fooled around with it, now and then.
It was about four feet long, and sharp.
Out in the pool, the stranger turned around. He eased down into the water, his body disappearing until nothing was left except his face. Then he started swimming again, apparently on his way to the deep end.
I stepped backward, turned away from the glass door and went to get the saber.
I’d forgotten that the foyer light was on. It was halfway down the long corridor, too far away for its brightness to reach the doorway of the den. But I saw it the moment I stepped out. Seeing the foyer light, I also remembered that the living room curtains were wide open.
The wall out there was mostly glass from one end to the other, from floor to ceiling. Like the wall of an aquarium.
From anywhere near the deep end of the pool, the stranger would have a fine view in.
I muttered a curse.
To be honest about it, I said “Shit.”
I hated my stupidity for not remembering to shut the curtains before dark. Bad enough that I’d missed out on popcorn because they were open, but now I couldn’t even go for the saber.
Obviously, I could go for it if I wanted to.
But I’m not that stupid.
Suppose, so far, the guy had no idea that anyone was in the house? He sees me sneaking through the living room, trying to get the saber, and he’ll know I’m here.
He’ll assume I’m alone.
Maybe he’ll like the looks of me. Even though I’m no glamour queen, I’ve got a great figure and I am wearing a clingy, revealing robe.
And he is already naked and aroused.
Maybe, so far, he’d only been interested in a little midnight skinny-dipping. But seeing me…
No way.
I wasn’t going to risk it.
I’ll wait till he tries to break in.
And maybe he won’t, I thought. Maybe he really did come here only to use the swimming pool. He might do a few laps, then walk back into the woods and that’ll be the end of it.
He might be breaking in right now.
I stepped back into the den. This time, I shut the door behind me to make sure no light could possibly sneak in from the foyer.
It had already dimmed my night vision. Except for the outside glow coming through the glass door, everything in the den looked much darker than before.
From where I stood, I could only see a small section of the pool. The stranger wasn’t in sight, and that worried me. So I hurried.
My bare left foot kicked a leg of the coffee table. From the sound, you’d think I’d struck the table with a hammer. My toes crumpled. Pain rushed up my leg. Tears flooded my eyes. My mouth flew open to let out a cry of agony, but I kept quiet and hobbled sideways and fell backward onto the couch. The couch scooted and bumped the wall. Flinging my leg up, I clutched my ruined foot.
From the feel of things, I figured two or three toes might be broken.
But the pain subsided after a couple of minutes.
Wet-faced and breathless, I fingered my toes. I wiggled them. They felt sore and kind of tired, but they seemed okay otherwise.
I wondered what the stranger was up to.
But I no longer wanted to look. I wanted to remain right where I was. The couch felt good under my back, even though my rear end was hanging off the cushion and I had to keep at least one foot planted on the floor to stop myself from sliding off.
Maybe I should swing my legs up, make myself comfortable, and stay put.
I wasn’t required to stand at the door and watch the stranger swim his laps.
He would go away, sooner or later.
Go away, or break in.
If he tries to break in, I’ll go for the saber. If he doesn’t, I’ll just…
What if I don’t hear him?
Such a huge house, he could make almost any kind of noise at the other end and I’d be none the wiser. Especially now that I’d shut the den door.
Also, there was the air conditioner.
The house had central air.
I couldn’t hear its machinery. The compressor, or whatever, was outside and pretty far away. But the den had a couple of vents and an air intake. They didn’t make enough noise to notice, usually. Just soft, breezy, breathy sounds. But now they seemed as loud as a gale.
The stranger could hurl a brick through the living-room window and I probably wouldn’t hear it.
Turn off the air.
The control box was mounted on the hallway wall, not far from the den. Only minutes ago, I’d been standing within reach of it. Too bad I hadn’t thought to reach out and flick it off. But my mind had been on the saber, not on the quiet noise of the air conditioner.
So, do it now.
I pushed myself off the couch and stood up. My toes ached, but not badly. I hardly limped at all on my way to the door. I wrapped my hand around its knob.
And suddenly wished, badly, that I hadn’t shut it.
What if I open it and he’s standing right there?
I pictured him on the other side of the door, naked and hard, dripping water onto the hallway carpet, grinning at me. He’d grabbed Charlie’s saber on his way through the house, and held it overhead with both hands like a Samurai all eager to split me down the middle.
My imagination likes to torture me with stuff like that.
I figured he probably wasn’t really there, or even in the house at all.
But my hand and arm felt frozen. I couldn’t force myself to open the door.
Then all of a sudden I got to thinking the knob might start to turn in my hand and he might throw the door open, crashing it into me and rushing in.
This was just my imagination at work, and I knew it.
But it scared me.
I let go of the knob and backed away from the door, pretty much expecting it to fly open. But it stayed shut. So then I turned around and faced the sliding glass door.
From where I stood, I could see the pool. Not much of it, though.
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.