It’s A Living

I’m in the tree outside her window. I watch as she undresses, preparing for bed, a ritual I’ve observed night after night for three weeks now. She’s pretty. Not Hollywood pretty or even hooker pretty, but plain girl next door pretty. The sexy librarian, the hair comes down, the glasses come off, and her true beauty is revealed. Plump, curvy, maybe even a little chubby, but those lovely breasts sway and hang as her bra comes off.

She brushes out her long blonde hair. Two hundred strokes with the broad brush. The same as last night. As the night before. As every night I’ve observed this ritual. I see her in the mirror, her eyes focused only on herself. Seventy-one. Seventy-two. Seventy-three. Her bosom is flushed and there is a pinkness in her soft round cheeks highlighting the alabaster sheen of her skin. Does this self-care arouse her? One hundred and twenty. Is it gazing at her own nude body that brings on the color? One hundred and fifty-seven. Or does she somehow know she’s being observed? Two hundred.

She sets to brush down on her makeup table and draws on a powder blue sheer babydoll. I wonder, not for the first time, why women bother to wear such things to bed. If they’re alone then no one sees it. If they’re with someone then at best the flimsy fabric ends up bunched on the floor, at worst destroyed. Lingerie is one of the greatest scams in the world, the cost of the garment being inversely proportional to the volume of fabric present. I guess it’s one of those questions men were never meant to know the answer to. She douses the light and from my time watching I know that she’s making her way under the oversized red Sherpa blanket that covers her queen sized mattress. She sleeps on a fitted sheet, but no top sheet. Her six pillows have mismatched slip cases.

I wait for five whole minutes staring into the dark room, unable to see my subject, but I know that she has wrapped the blanket around herself like a human burrito. Gift wrapped. I begin to slowly descend from my post. Tonight the observation ends and the practical research begins.

Tonight I give her what she asked for.