caught

Observed at the bus stop:

A man in his thirties stands with a nylon rucksack over one shoulder. A woman in sunglasses crosses the street, peering down in the direction of the expected bus. She steps onto the curb and stands by the busroute sign. Rucksack man glances over at her. She is wearing a skirt (not shockingly short but a bit over the knee) and black fishnets. He is looking at her legs and then looking away. If she sees him looking she doesn't show it. The sunglasses are opaque; who is to say where her glance falls? She might be looking anywhere. But he is looking at her legs, then at the sidewalk, then again at her legs, visible through the fishnet hose in a thousand little flesh-colored lozenges.

The bus comes into view, rolls to a hissing, air-braking halt; the woman boards and after her others who have been waiting, with them rucksack-man. She finds a forward-facing seat towards the back. He finds a backwards-facing seat near the front. She arranges her purse on her lap and crosses her legs. He swings the rucksack off his shoulder onto the floor between his feet. The bag stands on its end. A yellow jacket has been stuffed into an outside pocket. She has removed her sunglasses. Mostly she is looking out the window and away from him, but he is aware of her eyes now. He is a little more careful about stealing those intent glances down the aisle at her legs, folded, disappearing up into the black skirt.

Can he see anything of note? It is doubtful. Though the skirt has hiked up some, she has a generous sort of thigh that (even if it might afford a tactile thrill at closer quarters) occludes the line of sight to higher latitudes.

But he seems unable to restrain his gaze. He looks down at the lines in the rubberized floor, but they lead down the aisle, and his eyes keep stealing along them and up, back to the legs in the net hose, before he flicks them guiltily down to the floor again. For two miles along the road his glance goes around and around this circuit, never once resting on the rucksack at his feet and the black mesh of the outer pocket through which the jacket is visible as a hundred yellow lozenges.