Chapter 2

She should have left for work hours ago, but he hadn't seen her go. Usually a cab of that gray haired man in the Cadillac picked her up to take her to the studio around eight thirty. Not today. She had to be still in the house. He hasn't seen her leave, and he knew he couldn't have missed her; he had been in the area for four hours, since before dawn, watching her house just like he had every day for the past two weeks, first up in the hills, now down on the beach.

As usual that Tuesday morning, he had found his safe, secluded spot in the hills before dawn and watched her run. His powerful Zeiss binoculars silhouetted her moving image against the slowly brightened sea. Every morning she ran at least a mike up the beach and back as the sun came up. She was always alone, the only one out at that time.

As he had lain high above her, though he could sense the city throbbing and buzzing behind him, hardly a soul stirred nearby. He could see the lights of ships twinkling out the sea, the headlights of cars on the Coast Highway, already pale in the light of the rising sun as they arced around the long curve between Topanga and Santa Monica.

She timed herself against the sunrise, as if following and emulating its natural rhythms, in tune with it, like the dawn goddess. Or so it seemed to him. Every day now the sun rose a little later, but it was always just hidden behind the eastern hills she she started out and balanced on top of them like a huge fireball when she got back.

He watched the tide, too, how it ebbed and flowed. She always ran right along the water line. He had seen the spent waves foam and sparkle around her feet as if she were the very rebirth of Venus. Suddenly, here she came again. Walking out of the gate onto the beach. Not to run this time, but just walking, looking contemplative. His heart expanded so much he thought it would explode in his chest.

She was thinking about him. He knew it. She must have received his latest letter and read it. Now she walking alone on the beach thinking about him. He lay on a rock about a quarter of a mile further west, on the Topanga State Beach. It was eleven in the morning now and there were a few people around, some brave surfers and couples walking hand in hand. They didn't bother him, though. He knew he just looked like someone lying on a rock watching the seabirds.

Plenty of other people did that. It didn't look strange at all. In fact, living here, you would have to think very hard to find anything that really did seem weird, he thought. His kind of city. The place where he had finally become what he had been from the start but had only vaguely sensed before; where he had recognized himself at last; the place where he had both lost and found his soulmate, his life's companion.

He pulled her into focus through the lenses. The binoculars were so strong that he could fill them with her head and shoulders. She wasn't silhouetted now, and he could see her downcast tooth overlapping at the front, the only blemish on a perfect face. Well, that could easily be altered.

He could almost hear her thoughts, how she was rocking her brains to remember who he was, who it was loved her so much, so she could come to him. He felt her calling out to him. But no, not yet. There was still much to do before they could truly be together. For a moment, he felt guilty for torturing her so, but it passed. After all, wasn't anticipation one of the sweetest parts of conquest? And he had yet to conquer her.

While he didn't know what happen after the consummation when he thought of that, everything turned red- he knew that he would continue to feel this exquisite blending of aching and longing, of joy and desolatio, while he courted her from a distance. And he knew that she could feel it too.

There was also something special, something subtly erotic about watching her through the binoculars. To the naked eye, she was nothing but a dot in the distance, but when he raised the lenses, there she was, right in front him, in his face, her thoughts clear for him to read in her almost perfect features.

And when she made those little unconscious gestures, the things he loved her for so much, like scratching the side of her nose with her pinky, and he knew he was the only one in the world watching her, he felt such pride and power in his possession that it was all he could do to stop himself from jumping up and running into her, made him dizzy and wild, that whispered to him what he must do to win her love.

He must worship her from a distance. It was all too new; he wasn't ready yet, and he didn't think she was either. Oh, he loved her; Lord knew how much he loved her. But he had to make her realize that she loved him, had to make her see that he was the one. Soon, it would be soon...

As he lay there on his stomach watching her poke a small shells and pebbles with her bare toes, her little nails painted pink, his hands started to shake and he felt himself getting hard against the rock.