Chapter 3 – Chapter 3

Virtually the first thing I noticed when I woke up the next morning and stood, naked and stretching at the balcony overlooking the dining room, the downward-sloping and wooded front yard of the cabin, and the valley below were the footprints on the snow on the driveway, leading up from the road below and then back down again. It had snowed several inches in the night. The footprints weren't there when I had driven up the driveway—I was sure of that. Of course, however, being sure didn't stop me from wondering how observant I'd been while muscling the Forester up the incline. They would have been right there in front of me, though. If they'd been there last evening. Not that it mattered if there had been footprints when I arrived. It had snowed in the night, a significant accumulation. No, they were fresh footprints—probably sometime this morning.

"Strange," I thought, "for someone to be walking up to houses out here near the end of a spur road." While mulling this, I saw the blur of a black SUV pass by on the road before me. This shouldn't have surprised me, but it seemed that I should recognize the vehicle from somewhere—but I didn't. It was bigger and boxier than most SUVs were these days, but it didn't look old.

I ruminated about both of these sightings while I sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, and chewing on a bagel. I came here to think deep thoughts about my life, but I found myself thinking about unexplained footsteps in the snow. And that blur of black of a car this far back on a spur road. There was that cabin next door, of course. That would explain that. Maybe even explain the footprints, although the houses were on the same level, with no obstructions between them. It wouldn't seem that someone going between the two houses would need to go down one driveway and up the other. Maybe someone was in residence in one of the other houses on the road and had some responsibilities for this house. The heat had been on and up to a comfortable level when I had arrived. Maybe there was a caretaker here of sorts. Reg3 hadn't mentioned one, though.

I found myself ruminating on what such a caretaker might be like. Would he be old or a young, fit man? I tried not to think that it might be a woman.

Then I thought back onto the previous evening. I'd slouched in a sofa, facing the fireplace, the lights dim, although there had been light, watching gay male porn DVDs, and jacking off—several times because I was highly sexed—in front of a nearly full-wall expanse of glass and no drapes.

I rose from the kitchen table and padded out to the living room. I was barefoot and only wearing sleeping pants. I told myself, as I carried my coffee cup with me, that I was only going to take in the view across the bowl of the mountain and down the valley, through the widely spaced tree trunks in the front yard, but when I got to the window, I looked down at the floor of the deck that ran across the width of the cabin. The footprints in the snow came across the deck and stopped in front of the window.

When had they been made? This morning, while I was asleep in the loft, or last night when I was masturbating on the sofa? How many times had I stroked off and shot off. Three? Four? I shivered and headed for the stairs to the loft. When I was fully dressed I came down the stairs and went back into the kitchen. I was putting the coffee cup and the plate from the bagel in the kitchen sink when I looked out of the window above the sink and into the screened porch at the back of the house. There were snowy footprints, not melted, because it was below freezing outside, on the floor of the porch—coming to this window and also to the door out onto the porch.

I went to the door and opened it, noticing that the lock seemed to be broken, that the door couldn't be locked. Sure enough, the snowy footprints had come to the backdoor, shuffled around and retreated. They'd also gone to the sliding glass doors—no curtains—to the master bedroom off to the right.

But I hadn't slept in that bedroom last night. I shuddered to think that someone might have been standing there, in the dark, watching me in that bed—if I'd been in that bed. I, of course, had masturbated again in another bed the previous night before going to sleep. I was highly sexed, even when I had to take satisfaction in my own hands.

I didn't know what I could do. I felt violated, but I had to laugh at that. I'd never felt violated by a stream of younger, hunky men doing far more than watching me nearly naked or masturbating before. It was mostly the strangeness and mystery of it that put me on edge, I guessed—and being out here all alone. And all I had to do was wear more clothes and keep my personal sex to the loft overhead. No one could see me in the bed up there. And there was a TV with a DVD player up there—and even a fireplace. I could spend the weekend up there.

I went back down to the dining room and looked down the length of the driveway that rose to the carport under where I stood, and contemplated the footprints in the snow again.

That's when I saw him—bundled up in a dark green hunting jacket and leaning on a snow shovel—at the base of the driveway. He started moving when he saw me standing at the window. I watched him trudge up the driveway, slowly, carefully, because the snow was several inches deep and who knew what ice there was lying in wait underneath? His footsteps followed, but didn't obliterate, the footsteps in the snow that had preceded his.

I went to the front door. I'd already ascertained that he was a hunk. A Hispanic maybe, or Mediterranean in origin. Built big and sold; thick, curly black hair pushing out from underneath the hood of his jacket.

His smile was tentative when I opened the door to him. "Open a door to him," I thought, already horny enough again to open my legs to a man. I tried to keep my own smile from spilling over the sides of my face. He was a young—maybe twenty-five or so—muscular hunk. I could tell that despite the bulk of his clothing. If he had been watching me last night . . . and if he knew and was knocking on my door . . .

But the footprints must have been made in the night. I didn't think it was snowing when I went up to bed.

"Hi," he said. "I saw a car in the garage, so I knew someone was here. I thought maybe you'd like to have your driveway cleared."

"Thanks, but I was thinking I'd go out and do that myself this morning. For the exercise."

Was I being too forward in drawing his attention to my conditioning. I was in great shape for a fifty-year-old. And I knew I was good looking enough, in a blond, Scandinavian way. A good contrast to his olive tones. My mind went off into flights of fancy of olive skin on milky white, hands gliding on curves and in crevices of contrasting color, my eyes latched on curly black pubic hair as my mouth sank down the sides of a brown shaft.

I shook my head to clear it. If I said I wanted to clear the driveway myself, would he just back off—forever. He was probably straight. You never could tell. But that was just it; you never could tell. "Of course I have no idea if there even is a snow shovel here. The house belongs to a friend. I'm just hiding out here—alone—for the long weekend. And I see that you came prepared . . . I mean that you have a snow shovel."

I checked his expression. Was that a slight smile when I'd said "alone?"

"How much would you charge?" I asked.

His face lit up then. So, he was offering because he could use the money. I wondered, briefly, what else he'd do for money. It struck me then that maybe that was a good part of my trouble with men—I threw money at them; I bought their hard cocks. Not time to think about that now, though.

He named a price, which was fine, and I left him to turn toward starting the job. He turned back then, though, and said. "I see there's no firewood stacked up here. The firewood pile is against the side of the house. I could carry some of that up for you—enough to last the weekend."

"That would be good," I said.

"I could even bring some of it into the house if you didn't have enough inside."

"That would be nice too," I said. All of the signs were there. He'd even thought of a way to get into the house with me. "When you're done, I'll make you some coffee to warm you up before you have to go out again."

"That would be thoughtful," he said. A radiant smile before he turned back to the driveway.

Yes, I'm a quick thinker, I mused as I, reluctantly, closed the front door.