Max Collins - The last quarry

Still, my hand was on the nine millimeter in my jacket pocket. You never knew.

The Geo was parked in front of a secluded, expensive, sprawling home, not quite a mansion but oozing money, modern in the Frank Lloyd Wright manner, a story and a half with lots of wood and stone blending in nicely with the surrounding naturescape.

At the front door, she stooped on the stoop to pick up a newspaper, then gathered mail from the mailbox.

I was closer to the house now, and watched through a side window as she entered, mail and paper bundled in one arm, entering via a key in her other hand, pushing the door open-it was a little stubborn. A security tone kicked in, and a dog began to bark…from the sound of it, a small one, lapdog likely.

Which was good. A pinscher or a pit bull can ruin your day.

Janet went to a touchpad by the door and entered a code. I had an angle through the window that showed me her fingertips doing it, and I committed the numbers to memory, even if I did have to move my lips.

At a table near the door, already piled with rolledup newspapers and stacked magazines and envelopes, the librarian stood and sorted through the mail, putting individual items into their respective piles. Throughout, two things were a constant: I watched; and the dog barked.

She spoke to one of us, in a loud firm voice: “Just a sec, Poochie! Gimme a sec.”

Housesitting, most likely.

Through a kitchen window I watched as she unpenned the small dog-a little black-and-white rat terrier-who danced and yapped and danced and yapped for Janet. She knelt and petted it and it stood on its hind legs and lapped her face and whimpered orgiastically. About thirty seconds of good-girl-good-doggie talk followed. This I did not commit to memory.

I’d missed it, but while she was down there, Janet had attached a small leash to the dog, and when she and the doggie headed toward the back door, near the window I was peeking through, I damn near blew it.

But I got behind a tree in time, and then she was walking the terrier in the expansive, unfenced back yard, being careful not to walk in spots where the pooch had already made a deposit.

Over the next fifteen minutes, I kept watch as the woman and dog returned inside, and the woman put water and food down for the dog, re-penned it, then went around the house, watering plants.

Housesitting, for sure.

She was in the dining room when she finished the watering, and that’s where and when she began unbuttoning her blouse.

I kept watching as the blouse came open and a pinkish excuse for a bra was revealed; then the blouse and bra came off and nice breasts were revealed. Though she was in her thirties, no sag at all was apparent, full almost-C cups with half-dollar-size areolae and nipples that extended perhaps a half inch, soft.

She dropped the blouse and the bra to the floor, casually, and walked back into the kitchen, topless. There she stepped out of her skirt and revealed a half slip, which she also shed, letting me in on one of Victoria’s best secrets: lacy-edged pink panties cut high on the hip. Then she stepped out of those, as graceful as a dancer but so much more natural, moving on, leaving the clothes behind, littering lingerie. Her ass didn’t sag, either, her back beautifully dimpled above the firm roundness.

I paused for a moment. Shadowing this woman to fill a contract was one thing; but watching her disrobe seemed wrong, somehow.

Still, surveillance was surveillance…

Taking to the trees again, I scurried around the house, tripping on a root but not quite falling, and found my way to the rear of the place, where glass doors looked in on a swimming pool room, fairly elaborate, about two-thirds the size of the similar area back at Sylvan Lodge, and similar faux-rustic.

I positioned myself where I could see her as she entered-she was nude now, and wholly at ease, because how could she know some asshole was watching her, getting a hard-on?

But who could blame my dick for getting stiff? This was a nice-looking woman. No shaved pussy for my librarian, this was a full, old-fashioned bush, maybe trimmed back just a little, dark blonde and a nice contrast to her pale, creamy flesh. She had a classic shape, five foot five with a rib cage providing a nice display area for the perky rack, waist wasping in, hips flaring out. Her legs were a little heavy by today’s standards, but fuck today’s standards.

This was a woman.

A woman who walked to the deep end and dove in.

Which to witness, I don’t mind telling you, was in its way thrilling.

So I watched her swim. I watched her swim for a long time, taking her relaxation at the end of her working day by stroking the water, smoothly graceful, and then on her back, a dreamily sensuous if unintentional performance, and why wouldn’t it be?

She was nude, and she was beautiful.

And so I did my job, keeping her under surveillance, and my dick throbbed in my pants. Which is where I left it. I wasn’t going to unzip and jerk off or anything.

Jesus.

What kind of guy do you think I am?

Pushing the southern outskirts of Homewood, Sneaky Pete’s was one of those slightly upscale country-western bars where shitkickers were not welcome but young professionals were. In the low-slung brick building’s barely lighted parking lot-asphalt not gravel-you’d be more likely to see a Navigator than a Ford F150. Once inside, the music was that painfully homogenized country pop of the Faith Hill and Brooks and Dunn variety; the only saving grace was line dancing having gone out of fashion.

This was just your typical middle-class/upper-middle-class meat market, and a guy in his fifties had to work to look inconspicuous among all these twenty- and thirty-somethings.

It helped that the place was packed-this was Friday night, and lively with laughter, clinking glasses, and the promise of hooking up. Even though I was not a smoker, the notion that a bar like this was A SMOKE-FREE ENVIRONMENT seemed wrong, even wacky. Would entire generations of Americans grow up going out Friday and Saturday nights, not coming home with their bodies and clothing reeking of smoke? Another communal experience lost…

I was not able to sit as near Janet and her friend Connie as I would have liked. They were in a booth to my back, with a cluster of tables between us. But I was facing a bar with a mirrored wall, and my lip-reading skills came in handy.

The conversation I am about to report I admit took some filling in with my imagination, when my vision was blocked by patrons or wait staff, including the bartender (or ’tendress-a good-looking brunette in her mid-twenties in the red-plaid shirt and jeans that all the help wore, though she had her top tied into a Daisy Duke’s halter).

And I could actually hear some of Janet and Connie’s discourse. The nature of the loud music and yelled conversation made it possible to hone in on them, and pick some of it up.

Janet, in her emerald silk blouse and new jeans, was probably the most conservatively dressed woman in the joint-her blowsy gal pal Connie, for instance, was in a low-cut red sweater, an angora number that would’ve put a big grin on Ed Wood’s face, and jeans camel-toe tight.

They were drinking margaritas-on their second round.

And Connie was saying, more or less, “Honey! You should go after it- really.”

And Janet shook her head and said, “But you’re more qualified, Con. Plus, I can think of three people with more tenure than me!”

“ You’re the qualified one, Jan- you have the degree.”

A guy stopped alongside Connie, facing Janet; he was angled enough that it made him a tough read, but I got it: “ My wife won’t have to work.”

Rick.

Hadn’t recognized him at first-there were dozens of Ricks in Sneaky Pete’s. But this was a specific Rick, Rick the prick, the abusive boyfriend who had dropped by the library this afternoon, in his ongoing campaign to make this young woman’s life miserable.