The man used to stare at my face, my hair. He did not try to hide his attention as one might expect. He would watch my blonde hair in the sun, admire my soft flawless skin and no one would say a word.

His straw hat with the black ribbon, his cream suit, his awkward walk with a gold topped cane and his cultured solitude proved his money, his quiet power and his respectability and no one said a word. Perhaps they didn't notice. I imagine he thought I didn't, at first.

He would sit on the deck and watch me eat breakfast with my mother. His dark distant eyes, although unagressive, showed his longing. In his mind he would have arm wrestled my mother for my company.

I saw him long before he ever noticed me. I watched him arrive at our hotel, the Hotel des Bains, from my window. Being my mother's only son afforded me my own room, and it was from my cherry wood windowsill that I looked down upon a solitary figure arriving the back way through the garden terrace.

I watched as he picked a browning leaf from a waist-high vine and held it between his fingers. He looked down at it for a long time, perfectly still.

Light drops of rain began to fall on my windowsill and my bare arm. I glanced up at the pale grey sky and when I returned my attention to the man, he had gone.

I quickly leaned out my head, grabbing the outer stone sill tightly with both my hands and caught sight of him once more as he disappeared underneath me through the doors into the hotel vestibule.

He watched me play at the beach for hours every day. I would lie on the sand in my blue and white bathing suit pretending to ignore him, and he would sit unmoving on a deckchair by his cabin. Often I would wade out to sea and stand, resting one hand languidly on my hip, and look over my shoulder, waiting for him to find me.

He was not the first man to look at me this way, but he was the oldest. Our eyes often met in the halls and corridors, but he or I always made sure to look away.

We stayed in the same hotel in Venice for over a month. In the fourth week he abandoned all pretense and began blatantly to follow me. As I walked through the streets, four paces behind my family, I would glance behind me and there he would always be, hiding in shop doorways and behind corners.

I pressed the circular backlit button on the wall with one finger, and as the elevator doors opened I found the man inside.

The elevator was full and quiet, and I pressed in tightly, moving towards him inside the small compartment. He remained still, leaning stiffly against the rear wall, his hat held tightly before him.

He had never been so close to me. I felt him breathe in hard and slow, perhaps trying to inhale my scent. I shifted slowly and grazed his arm with mine, waiting for his reaction. The man's hat dropped to the floor, and his hand shook as he hesitated and leaned over awkwardly.

I knelt gracefully to retrieve it and the man held his breath. He took the hat from my hands as I rose and I dropped my head. Blonde hair fell over my face but could not fully hide my smile.

One cold afternoon we met without warning. We were both startled at the sight of one another and I let down my guard. I let our eyes meet honestly, and he returned my full soft gaze. Inside my eyes a lay a question, but a smile slowly formed there my lips parting, and he smiled back, grateful.

The next and last time I ever saw him he had responded to my acknowledgement and coloured his hair. Where it had once been a subtle grey - the same shade as his eyes, it was now a grotesque powdery black.

He had come to the beach to find me. He reclined there in the shade of an umbrella and ran a hand through his hair to draw my attention. I saw his desperate attempt to attract me, and his weakness made me hate him.

His hopeful gaze nudged at me expectantly, and he looked on as repulsion distorted my features. I watched satisfied as his face changed, his shoulders fell and his gaze dropped from mine - and turned coldly from his wounded eyes, to wade as far as I could out into the dead calm of the glinting ocean.

I looked back over my shoulder at the shore some time later. The man hadn't moved from the position I had left him in. He sat limply in his chair, unmoving, his chin resting heavily on his chest. I turned and left his pathetic form still and silent for eternity.

 

©2003 Laura Gomez - Contributor's Bio