Part 11 (1/2)

I was right!

Through the hole he saw two hands bearing a bucket. The bucket was upended into the tub, then withdrawn. But...

Who was emptying the bucket?

He only caught the quickest glimpse, then...

Silence.

Next, he heard the slightest clattering, and a few footsteps. Then he saw a blur...There she is...

It was Mrs. Butler, or at least he thought so. He couldn't see her face, of course-the peephole only afforded a close perimeter. But now a woman stood before the tub, her b.u.t.tocks to Collier's eye. A creped lavender dress jiggled as hands pushed it down by the waistband. Yes, it was definitely Mrs. Butler. I know that dynamite old b.u.t.t anywhere... Collier's heart stepped up at the acknowledgment of what was about to happen: She's going to strip and take a hip bath...and I get to watch.

He'd been l.u.s.ting after her extraordinary body all day-now came the moment of truth.

He was looking at a pair of white cotton panties stretched out by the preeminent derriere. The view crawled up the lines of her back to her shoulders where it stopped. He could see the bra strap, too. Already, Collier's loins were tingling.

Don't get your hopes up, he reminded himself. She's an old lady. Just because her body fills the dress right doesn't mean it won't be a wrinkled wreck once she's nude...

The panties were pushed off and the bra removed...

And Mrs. Butler's body was not a wrinkled wreck by any stretch of the imagination.

Mama mia...

Now the hole circ.u.mscribed an hourgla.s.s of plush soft-white flesh. Midsixties be d.a.m.ned, Collier's eyeball was going dry staring at a rump, back, and shoulders that existed essentially without flaw.

Not a pock. Not a wrinkle. Not a mole, liver spot, pimple, nor blemish and not a single dimple of cellulite.

This old lady's not just a brick s.h.i.+t-house-she's the mother of ALL brick s.h.i.+t-houses...

Collier's arousal was plain at once, even in spite of the influx of alcohol. It wasn't just the primal sight of this sumptuous bare b.u.t.tocks just a few feet from his eye, it was the psychological effect: the antic.i.p.ation. If he thought this side was good viewing, he could scarcely imagine the other side, and he knew in just moments she would turn around to let him see it all. And there was something else, wasn't there?

Collier knew-he felt absolutely 100 percent certain- that when she did indeed traverse her body, his eyes would be wide-open on a meticulously shaved pubis, which would hereby end the mystery of the Keyhole Flasher.

He felt his crotch without being conscious of it...

His eye went back to the peephole...

Mrs. Butler turned around at the exact moment. Here comes the bald beaver, Collier thought.

He froze.

Where he expected clean white skin and a pink cleft he saw instead a bounteous quantum of feminine thatch. Another wrong number...

At one point she appeared to lean backward-to grab something behind her?-which stretched the downy matt almost as if on cue. Collier didn't see any gray hairs in the mound, but he knew it was her. Then Mrs. Butler lowered herself into the hip tub.

Holy smokes...

Above the neck, he could only see her chin and some untied gray hair touching her shoulders. The rest was a vantage shot of her pubis, stomach, and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. What she'd reached back for was obviously a piece of the Civil War-era soap called ash cake. It was a grayish color in hand but when she glided it over her wet skin, it sudsed faintly like normal bar soap.

A voyeur's paradise now glowed back into Collier's eye: Mrs. Butler's hand soaping up her crotch, belly, and b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Oh, man, this is better than my first Playboy when I was nine...

The image was so vivid, he thought of the most re-fined p.o.r.nography. The light and her wet skin conspired to an image that seemed to just keep sharpening. And judging by the motions of her sudsy hand...

She was doing more than was.h.i.+ng.

Only then was Collier even aware that he'd previously taken himself in hand. By then he couldn't help it. He felt absurd, yet the idea of stopping was beyond consideration. He kept staring with one eye through the hole, intent on the potent image, yet another part of his consciousness realized the absolute necessity that he MUST NOT make a sound. Mrs. Butler's slick torso wriggled in rhythmic waves. When her hips began to buck, her o.r.g.a.s.m was apparent.

So was Collier's.

He slammed his eyes shut and closed his teeth hard against his lip. The sensation sidled him over on the floor, and there he cringed.

Cheek to floor, he lay for many moments, eyes wide in the dark, heart racing down. Impulse urged him to get up and watch the last of Mrs. Butler's private antics but he simply couldn't move.

Paralyzed...

When he put his hand down to push himself up, it landed on a damp spot. Oh, sure, Collier, go ahead and jerk off on the rug. It was only handwoven in the 1850s and should probably be in the f.u.c.king Smithsonian.

When he got back to his knees, he looked in the peephole but found it dark. He fumbled to his feet, turned on the bed lamp, and took some tissues to feebly daub up what s.e.m.e.n he could.

The residue of his sperm left damp marks that could've been a gorilla's handprint. It'll dry up, he hoped.

Then, for some reason, he looked back at the hole.

Questions occurred to him now. Like: Who drilled it?

Some kink who'd rented this room before me...

And now that he thought of it, the hole had obviously been drilled with some thought behind it. A perfect deadeye view of the hip tub, he reasoned. The hole had even been angled down, to maximize the tub's position and ensure that the woman's crotch, belly, and b.r.e.a.s.t.s all fit into the circ.u.mference. I guess you call that Pervert's Craftsmans.h.i.+p.

He inadvertently touched the hole and found it splintery.

Hmm.

His ruminations started to tick, and he quickly redressed, left his room, and went to the bath closet's door. He knew Mrs. Butler wasn't in there anymore because he'd seen the light was off. The stair hall, both ways, stood empty. Collier entered the bath closet.

Warm air touched his face, and he smelled an expected soapy fragrance. His finger clicked the lights on.

The hip tub remained in place but had been emptied. The wall next to the window hosted a large sink and an old-fas.h.i.+oned wooden toilet seat with a chamber pot in a compartment beneath, the latter obviously for display only. There was also a large-and modern-janitorialtype sink.

On the other wall stood an identical vase cabinet, which seemed exactly opposite of the one in his room, and a yard to the left of that...

Collier leaned over and found the hole. He rubbed his finger against it and found it- Smooth...