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Show 7S-AH, SWIMMERSl 237 craned forward unbelieving - but there he was, dressed and kneeling just inside die window. For a wild minute I had die idea diat eidier he or I had day and night mixed up and diat he was praying. Though not a prayer myself I knew you were supposed to get on your knees before the helplessness of sleep, certainly not before going out to do business, and I was both confused and embarrassed. People praying have always embarrassed me and I had started to turn away when I saw the movement of a white arm on his shoulder and I realized that she was sitting mostly out of sight on the edge of die bed and diat he knelt diere in her arms, embracing her. I watched them, a curious hush upon me and diey as if the only two in die sweet cool morning world, while between us soft and still die liquid sunlight lay rich upon the grass. Then he rose, stood for a moment apparently talking to her, turned and moved out of sight. Still I gazed on in the full hush of a smalltown day not yet awakened. I could see only her white legs, and then her hands came into view with a brassiere which she slid up her arms. Her hands disappeared. Then she stood and in pants and bra moved out of sight to the closet. I think probably he raised die blind every morning. In the most normal predictable routine he would get up, dress, build a kitchen fire and come back to rouse her, opening the blind at that time. While die range was heating up, she would dress, and if she didn't realize the sun turned her screen transparent I felt it was a generous error. And I still wonder if she really cared; I like to diink she was enchanted with the morning sun pouring into her bedroom and to hell with you all out diere. Regardless, she still had amazing privacy as far as I was concerned. I was appreciative, yes, but I was more absorbed in finding excuses for not mowing die lawn while I planned a fourteen-mile hike so that I could rise in the ranks of Scouting; and I was much more interested in the possibility of my fadier getting a job in Grand Junction, a city of eleven thousand people, three times the size of our town. In short, I usually forgot to look over and never again saw her from my window. June was gone, July was going, I had practically forgotten her, and then I got interested in voyeurism once more. For one filing, I was by then nearly all baritone and spent considerable time walking around as if I had a fused bomb in my pocket and no idea of what to do with it. Another was her going out to sunbathe. I don't know how often she did; I only saw her once, she in the one-piece suit of the time, quite modest, carrying a towel out to a small patch of lawn and lying on it. Nothing unusual about that, except that in the diirties in small Colorado towns like mine no one did such diings. Definitely. So I was charmed by somediing sensual and defiant in her act - but still it took my father to set me off. When I came into the kitchen one morning he appeared to have been looking out die window and to have ceased when I appeared, with reluctance but widi a grin. "It's a free country," he said to my modier. |