She was moving around her kitchen in a pale light as I padded up the alley and glanced in the long pane of the sliding door. The small window over the sink was open. I could smell coffee, so I slowed. I would enjoy my own cup of coffee after my run, but the fragrance was a nice excuse to re-tie my shoes.

This was how it began, my introduction to voyeurism, that simple gateway to my willing compliance to so much more. I had not intended to become a voyeur. I was just getting my morning exercise, taking the daily run around my new neighborhood. The first time I saw her, I thought she had forgotten to close the drapes. In the low light before dawn, perhaps she presumed no one would see her. What a glorious happenstance that I should be in that place at that exact moment!

That first day, she had partially dressed. Her blouse was unbuttoned. I could see a blue bra and lush cleavage as she stood at her sink to sip her coffee and look out to the birdfeeder in her yard. But the birds were not there. I had scared them off and now they were scolding me from the dense shrubbery that surrounded her plot of well-tended herbs and flowers. Rising, I had a brief impulse to slide behind a tall bush, but I was stalled as one of her hands lifted to clasp the blouse closed at her throat. Yet she remained in the window looking out, hidden from the waist down. She sipped her coffee, finally rinsing the cup and leaving the kitchen.

I moved on, delighted I had that little glimpse into a stranger's privacy. The quiet delight infused the workday. It was such a small thing, that serendipitous glance. An everyday scene, though in all likelihood I'd witness her just once. The sheer fleetingness of the image of her gave me a small thrill. All day I saw flashes of the intense blue her bra had been. The blue appeared in the paint on the door of the body shop around the corner, on the papers that crossed my desk, in the pattern of the plate from which I ate lunch. I saw that blue on the covers of magazines at the newsstand and in the icing on the cakes in the bakery window. The color was everywhere, and each time I saw that shade, the image of the woman in her blue bra, drinking coffee at her kitchen window, came back and made me smile. She hadn't seen me, didn't know she was being watched. It was my delicious secret.

The next day, of course, I ran the same route in hopeful anticipation. Was her schedule the same as mine? Was that one glimpse an aberrance, a quirk created by an early meeting or dental appointment? The question in my head kept time with my feet as I ran. Would she be there, would she be there, would she be there?

From some way down the alley, I could see that both the glass door and the window above the sink were dark. That day, I was running in dirt-darkened shoes and navy shorts and shirt rather than the safety colors I usually ran in. I slowed as I neared her forsythia and was quiet enough that the birds at her feeder merely paused when I stopped at her gate. I watched the resident cardinals, finches, and sparrows, then noticed the flash of a very early hummingbird and followed it with my eyes to a small red feeder hung near the sliding doors. The hummingbird hovered--and behind him in glass the woman in blue took shape in the dark.

She wore a full-length blue robe, cinched at the waist. I did not worry that she'd seen me. I didn't even think about it. I was transfixed. But my brain was racing. If she challenged me, if she called an alarm or phoned the police, I would say I had not seen her. I would say I had been watching the birds at her feeder.

But she did nothing of the sort. She untied the sleek, blue robe and opened a full frontal view. My hand went to my crotch, though I swear I did not intend to stroke my cock. It was only that my erection was constrained by the elastic liner of my shorts. I had to adjust myself for comfort.