VERONA

     The weather was miserably hot and sticky in the ancient city of Verona.  I
was there to attend the opera CARMEN at the city's Roman arena, along with
twenty thousand or so other people.  
     I am no fan of opera but, as usual, I was under the influence of the woman
beside me (my sister) who wanted to see one, so there I was, sweating bullets
and being elbowed by people of several nationalities, none of whose cultural up
bringing included standing in line.  Oddly enough I didn't really mind because
of the lady against whose back I was jammed.  She was a stranger but not so
much as she had been a half hour before, when I had found myself standing
behind her in a semi-line, waiting to use a uni-sex toilet in a crowded bar.
     I had noticed how lovely she was as we stood in line.  She was tall and
lithe and I could see the ends of her bobbed strawberry blond hair sticking out
from beneath her round school girl type straw hat.  The hat emphasized the
sweetness of her  face; the high cheek bones; the soft pout of her lips; the 
sensual roundness of her chin.  Her eyes were gray-green and so big a man could
lose his mind in them.  Her skin was silky  clear and, despite the sweaty heat,
it made me think of rich  smooth French vanilla ice cream.
     She was wearing a midi-length yellow sleeveless summer dress with little
flowers on it.  It buttoned up the front from hem to high enough to cover her
breasts, but not so high as to keep from giving a tall fellow like me teasing
glimpses of her perspiration shiny cleavage.  She  was not wearing a bra.  I
could tell both by glimpse and by the pointed shape of her nipples poking up
the little flowers on the bodice her dress.       
     The lady was having trouble standing still.  Between her need for what we
were both standing in line for, and the  heat, she was dancing from foot to
foot and flapping the skirt of her dress in a kind of bellows motion to try to
bring some air beneath it.  She noticed me watching her flap and dance and
smiled, a bit embarrassed.
     "I'm still like a little girl,"  she said, with a crisp British accent. 
"I hate wearing clothes in the summer, and I hate waiting for the loo."
     "Does that mean you usually go naked in the summer?"  I  asked.  I hadn't
really meant to say anything so forward, but I was under the spell of the
delicious glimpses of her breasts  and those eyes.
     She lifted an eyebrow at me and I thought I had offended  her, but after a
moment she smiled and said, "Actually yes.  When it is warm enough I shed my
clothes.  Not in public though."
Her smile turned to a wicked grin.
     "Ah," I said.  "What a disappointment."
     At that point we moved forward a little and she stepped into the tiny
ante-room of the toilet, where the sink was, and let the door close between us.
     When the current user left the toilet the British lady stepped in, and
pulled the door closed.  I stepped into the tiny ante-room and let its door
close behind me so that I stood  almost against the toilet door in relative
quiet. 
     And then it happened. . . .  
     Through the toilet door I heard the hiss of the golden stream rushing out
of her, and the splash of it falling into the toilet.  It sounded like she was
pouring it from a pitcher on the second floor into a rain barrel on the ground,
and the sound of it made my heart skip.  In my mind I could see her.  Rather
than sit her naked bottom on a seat that had been occupied by un-numbered
thousands, she had simply hiked up her dress and straddled the commode.  The
picture of her,-- skirt held bunched above her waist, knees a little bent, legs
bowed open, quadraceps slightly strained and so showing their delicious curves
through the smooth flesh of her thighs; the strawberry blond delta of pubic
curls; the lightly fuzzed lips of her womanhood parted to show the coral color
of the inner lips; the pink pearl nubbin of her clitoris.  And from the center
of that delectable flower the salty/bitter stream spurting forth to break into
golden droplets just before it splashed into the water of the toilet.
     She squeezed off the stream for a moment, but then let a shorter burst of
the mind torturing liquid spew out.  It stopped again for the length of a heart
beat then resumed for two more tiny, finishing dribbles before the clattery
spinning noise of toilet paper sheets being pulled from the roll reached me. 
That sound set off another picture in my mind -- A wad of tissue held in her
long graceful fingers as she carefully daubbed the last few drops of that heady
liquor from between her legs.
     I wondered if she had simply pulled her panties down or  stepped out of
them completely.  No-- She had to have stepped  out of them.  Just pulling them
down she might have accidentally wet them so she must have stepped out of them
-- unless she wasn't wearing any.  That would fit too.  She wasn't wearing  a
bra, and she said she hated to wear clothes in the summer.
     That sound and those mental images had made my manhood stiffen like a
steel post.  Even my jocky shorts could not restrain it.  It made a very
noticable lump in the front of my pants.  
     I was thinking that my condition was going to make my own toilet visit
difficult when the lady opened the door and stepped out -- right into my arms. 
Her forehead was just high enough for me to have kissed.
     "Oh.  Hello again," she said, embarrassed at meeting me at such close
quarters.  It was then that she felt my rampant member poke her in the tummy. 
She jumped back, but bumped into the door of the toilet and rebounded into my
arms.
     "I'm sorry," I said, turning bright glowing red, and trying to step back
myself.
     "Quite all right," she mumbled, looking anywhere but into my eyes.  She
ended up staring at my zipper, and that was when she realized that my situation
was because I had heard her pee. 
     "Oh my God," she said and lifted a slim hand to her mouth.
     I was suddenly able to read her mind.  She had her own  mental images of
me, my ear pressed to the door, my fingers  pressed to my zipper.  "No!  It
wasn't like you think!  I didn't mean to listen.  I couldn't help it!  I'm
sorry."
     Now she smiled and laughed a little.  "Well, I did have to pee rather
badly."
     I blinked at her, then returned her smile.  "No doubt about it," I said.
     "I'm glad you enjoyed it," she said and slipped around me and out the
door, leaving me with my mouth hanging open.

     And now I was jammed against her back by the crowd shoving toward the
entry way.
     A particularly forceful shove from behind me made me reach to check my
wallet at the same time I bumped hard against her back.
     "I say, steady on," she said and glanced over her shoulder. Our eyes met
and her stern expression changed to a charmingly crooked smile.  "Oh.  You
again," she said.
     "I didn't know you Brits really did say 'Steady on'.  I thought that was
just a David Niven movie line."
     "Perhaps I should have simply elbowed you and said, 'Watch  it buddy!'" 
Her imitation American accent wasn't bad.
     "Who's your friend?"  my sister asked.
     I had forgotten she was with me.  "I'm sorry, I don't know your name," I
said to the top of the school girl hat.
     "Nor I yours," she said glancing back again.
     "Since we are on such intimate terms maybe we should be introduced.  I'm
Geoff, and this is my sister Darlene."
     "How do you do.  I would shake hands, but my arms seem to be pinned to my
sides.  I'm Samantha."
     "Are you alone?"  Darlene asked.
     "Why no, I'm with my friends Geoff and Darlene," she said.
I laughed.  "Samantha and I met in the line for the john back in the bar."
     "Oh," Darlene said.
     "An enlightening experience," Samantha said and turned back to face the
front. 
     We all lost interest in the small talk about then because the mob surged
forward with the opening of the gates.  I lost interest, less because of the
crush than because I was crushed against Samantha's back.  The humid heat of
her body transfered from her to me like an indrawn breath and my testes tingled
as though touched with a gentle electric shock.  My cock began to rise, and
there was no way to hide it, what with it jabbing the small of her back like
the barrel of a .44. 
     I was trying to think of something clever to keep Samantha from screaming
rape or masher or something when she half turned her head and smiled a sweet
Madonna smile.  "Crowds are so difficult aren't they?" she said.
     "I'm sorry," I began.  "It's just that I can't get rid of a certain mental
image, and your perfume is killing me."
     "I should have thought I smelled like perspiration," she said.
     "If this is the stink of sweat I am glad I didn't meet you when you were
all fresh and perfumed.  I would have died on the spot."
     "Oh.  How gallant," she said.  "You American's aren't nearly so crass as
television would lead one to believe."
     That was almost too much for me.  When she said "Gallant"  my out of
control mind ticked over with memory of an erection being called "the Gallant
Response."
     We were funneled through a door and started up some steps of a tunnel
which lead into the arena.  The steps were much higher than ordinary steps;
almost twice as tall in fact, and that brought the luscious swell of Samantha's
hips higher--just high enough for my still turgid member to go from poking the 
small of her back to poking into the cleft of her bottom; low in that cleft.   
  
     Now I truly expected her to scream.  We were, after all, almost locked in
the most intimate of connections.  Only angle and the material of my Jockey
shorts, my light summer trousers, and the thin yellow cloth of her dress kept
us from joining.  But she did not scream or try to get away, instead she moved
her feet a little to the sides, there by opening her thighs and widening the
cleft where my cock rested.  And, as if that were not more of a dream come true
than I could ever have hoped for, she then squeezed that delicious nether
cleavage tight upon my intrusion for a moment, then released it. 
     I could not help but moan and lift my right hand to cradle  the wonderful
roundness of her right bottom cheek.  My fingers slid into the cleft beside my
cock and I felt that firm globe tremble a little as I squeezed it.
     "What was that?"  Darlene said, pulling at my other hand.  "Was that you?"
     "I'm squished," was all I could manage to say.
     We moved up the steps again.  I dropped my grip on Samantha  and held back
against the crowd a little, trying to get some distance between Samantha and
myself, for I just knew this was all going to come crashing down around my ears
with screams for police and me being carted away to the local Bastille.
I could already hear the judge saying "The charge is assault with a friendly
weapon. . . ."  
     The separation indeed took my still stiff member from between those
shapely, muscular buttocks, but it brought my  nose nearer to them.  So near
that her perfume (and I don't mean the kind that comes in a bottle) clouded
around me.  It almost made me moan again.  The mixed aromas of salty/bitter
perspiration, and the warm sea smell of natural feminine lubricant was so
strong I could taste it on my tongue.  
    And suddenly another irresistible image flickered through my errant mind. 
An image of Samantha with her skirt held above her waist, her legs apart, knees
a little bent so that her quadraceps were flexed and showing through that
silken flesh, but this time I knelt between those spread thighs.  I held those
delicate, strawberry blond fringed outer lips apart with my fingers and ran the
point of my tongue between those coral inner lips.  From the tight cinnamon
brown flower of her anus, up into the opening of her womb, then up and over and
around the hard pearl nubbin of her clit.  The salty sweet taste of her was
like costly, dangerous liqueur that could addict and poison a man so that he
could not continue to live without tasting it again and again.
     "Will you come on!"  Darlene said, pulling at my hand.
We're holding up traffic!  What is the matter with you any way?"
     "The heat, I guess,"  I mumbled, my voice shaky with the  dregs of my
image.
     Samantha had gained three steps and was almost at the opening into the
arena.  Afternoon light flooded through that opening, and through the yellow
cloth of Samantha's dress, silhouetting her body; the long legs, the round firm
bottom.  I would have sworn I could see the cleft that divided right  from left
between her legs, but that may have been a trick of the light and of my fevered
mind. 
     And then I saw the cop. . . .
     He was standing at the side of  the opening and Samantha nodded at
something he said.
     Oh God, here it comes, I thought with the echo of clanging  steel doors in
my head.
     The crowd divided at the door some going right some going  left. 
Samantha, after nodding at the cop went right.  Darlene  and I stepped up to
the arch and sure enough the cop's hand came up to grab my arm as I started to
the right.
     "Non Signori, alla sinistra per favore.  La destra ha troppo gente gia."
     My Italian isn't so good so it took me a moment to understand that he
wasn't busting me, he was telling me to go to the left because the right was
too crowded.  
     Relief swept over me for a second, but then regret bubbled up to drown it.
 Samantha was going the other way!  I glanced back over my shoulder to see the
back of her lovely yellow dress and pert little schoolgirl hat being swallowed
by the pushing pulsing mob, anxious to find a place to sit in the ancient
arena. 
     Darlene and I fought our way through the crowd and found  places to sit. 
The ancient tiers of stone benches were hard  beyond belief and I complained to
Darlene about it.
     "Well what did you expect dummy," she said.  "They've been here more than
a thousand years.  If they weren't hard they would have worn away a long time
ago."
     "Yeah, and then my poor abused ass wouldn't be forced to park on them."
     "Just shut up will ya?  We'll get cushions when the guy comes around.  Try
to enjoy the show. . . ."
     "Yeah, yeah," I said, thinking about the beautiful lost Samantha.
     "And if you can't enjoy it at least shut up so that I can.  P. . . .lease!
 Be a good big brother, Huh?" she pleaded.
     I glanced over at her and saw that she had that damned cute little pouty
face on that I couldn't say no too when we were kids and knew I still couldn't.

     "OK, OK. Enjoy your damned Opera."
     "Oh Thank you!" she said and gave me a quick hug, then turned to dig in
the straw bag she had brought with her.  "Here, hold this," she said and stuck
a pair of opera glasses in my hand.
     Opera glasses!
     I put them up to my eyes and began scanning the arena for a flash of
yellow dress, schoolgirl hat, and strawberry blond hair.

     It was going to take a long time to comb through twenty thousand people
looking for one person in particular, but what else did I have to do?  It was
still almost two hours until the beginning of the opera, and I had memory of
Samantha to keep my hopes up.
     "Can you see anything?"  Darlene asked.
     "Folks.  Lots and lots of folks."
     "Let me see."
     "In a little bit," I said and didn't stop scanning the area I thought
Samantha had gone.
     "Hey, they're my opera glasses!"
     "Did you bring two pair?"
     "No silly.  Why would I do that?"
     "Well I might like to see the stage too."
     "You don't like opera, remember?"
     "Oh yeah,"  I said still scanning.
     "So, gimme," she said and tried to get the little binoculars away from me.
 I wasn't having any of that though since I had just caught a flash of yellow
that might have been the flash I was seeking.
     "I'll let you have 'em when the show starts.  Where is the guy with the
cushions?  You seen him?"
     "You can rent opera glasses too," she said, a little peeved at me."
     "Really?  So rent some then."
     "But I have some.  These!"  she snatched the glasses out of my hand.
     "Hey!"
     "Rent yourself some," she said and stuck her the glasses against her eyes.
 "Oh look!  There's that English girl that was ahead of us outside!"
     "What?  Where?"  I tried to snatch the glasses back, but Darlene pulled
away.
     "Get your own," she said.  "What is the matter with you anyway?"
     "Crazy with the heat," I snapped looking around for a guy to rent
binoculars from.  There was one a dozen yards down from us and I popped to my
feet and started waving and hollering like I was on fire to get his attention.
     When I got the glasses (cheap plastic ones not nearly as good as
Darlene's) I said, "Where is she Darlene?"
     "Who?"
     "What do you mean who?  Samantha.  The English girl."
     "Oh.  She's over there."  She waved vaguely toward the other side of the
stadium.
     "Gee thanks," I started scanning again and, by plain damn luck my first
sweep caught a flash of yellow.  I backed up and scanned the same strip more
slowly.  Sure enough, it wasn't just my fevered imagination.  There she was,
sitting like a vision amid the mob, and she was looking through rented opera
glasses right at me.  I knew she was looking at me because when she saw my
glasses pointed at her she lowered hers and waved. She was smiling the same
wicked smile she had favored me with when she came out of the john.

     Opera at the Verona Arena has a tradition that maybe all out door opera
performances have, I don't know, but when the orchestra begins it's final tune
up before the overture everybody gets out candles and lights them up.  There
are even vendors in the arena who sell candles, some just a little bigger than
birthday candles, and some bigger, like dinner table candles.  Darlene bought a
couple of the little ones and when the orchestra stopped making noise and
started making music we lit them up.
     I had been looking every few minutes just to make sure that Samantha was
still there and hadn't moved, or evaporated. It was getting harder and harder
to see though, since dusk was thickening toward night.  Now I lifted my plastic
binoculars again and saw that Samantha had bought a couple of candles too, but
not the little ones.  She had both of them blazing away now and I noticed that
she had lifted the hem of her dress up and laid it upon her knees.  Still very
prim, but now from the knees down her legs were exposed.  That made my mind
tick over like a Swiss watch.  She was a couple of rows higher than we were so
that my eye level was about at her knees and my fevered imagination went
romping across that distance to peek between those shapely knees. . . .
     But of course that wasn't going to happen.  I gave myself hell for even
thinking about it, because the thought was torture, so I shoved the thought out
of my mind and tried to concentrate on the music.
     The dusk had thickened to true darkness by the time the arena lights faded
at the end of the overture.  The crowd disappeared in the dark except for the
little candles still burning here and there.  Most of the little ones like
Darlene had bought were burned out, but those bigger ones were still
flickering.
     Stage lights came up and the attention of almost everyone in the stadium
went there.  Mine did not.  I put my plastic binoculars to my eyes and looked
toward Samantha. . . and almost dropped them.  Samantha had pulled her dress
hem half way up her thighs and parted her knees about a foot.  The light from
her still burning candles illuminated what would have been a dark tunnel
beneath her dress and between her thighs.  The light color of her dress and the
silky reflective paleness of her flesh made it so that I could see her feminine
cleft through its light fuzz of pubic curls.
     I lifted my glasses a little and could barely see her face in the left
over light of the candles.  Beneath her round little hat I could see her opera
glasses aimed at me, and beneath them I could see her smiling lips.
     I lowered my glasses and willed them to be better than  they were.  It
looked as though the pubic curls along the inside edge of her pussy lips were
darker than those more toward the  top of her mons.  Damp maybe?  I thought and
cursed those cheap  binoculars.
     Without even thinking about it I reached out and grabbed Darlene's glasses
right away from her eyes.
     "Hey," she protested drawing several dirty looks from people around us.
     "Please Darlene.  Please.  Here take these, but let me use yours.  Please.
 If you love your brother even a little you'll do this for me."
     She looked at me with a sort of odd, worried look, but she took the cheap
glasses I was holding out toward her and let me have hers.
     I clapped her much better glasses to my eyes and turned them to Samantha's
lusciously exposed Delta of Venus.
     "The show is down that way," Darlene whispered and tugged at my elbow.
     "You only think so," I answered and increased my concentration so much
that if Darlene said anything else I  totally blocked it out.
     Samantha looked from side to side to make sure no one was taking notice of
what she was doing.  Eyes all around her were riveted to the stage.  No one
except me paid any attention to that most delicious view and, seeing that, she
opened her knees a little farther and scooted her bottom forward on her rented
cushion.  That caused her pelvis to tilt up a little and the outer lips to
spread perhaps the width of a finger.  Within that cleft it was almost as I had
envisioned; the inner lips were clearly visible and they might have been the
coral pink  my imagination had colored them, but the flickering yellow light of
the candle flame made it hard to tell.  It didn't matter. They looked delicate
and fragile as satin ribbon, folded back slightly from the opening of the womb.
 If I could run my tongue along them, I thought, they would swell so much they
would push out passed the outside lips and make that orchid open up to me so
that I could taste the nectar deep inside it.
     At the top, just below where those petals of her womanhood came together
the nubbin of her clitoris protruded.  It was swollen and upright and begging
for someone to stroke it and roll it gently back and forth. . .
     Again Samantha looked from side to side and, still finding no eyes on her
but mine, she brought her delicate, long fingered left hand down and, shielding
it with her right forearm, she stroked her index finger from the bottom of her
pussy up between the inner lips to her wantonly engorged, achingly beautiful
pearl clit.  A visible shudder ran through her as she stroked that center of
her desire, and I could feel the quivering of her thighs against my hands
though we were fifty yards apart.  The first breeze of that sweltering day rose
and washed down into the arena like a cooling tide.  Twenty thousand voices
moaned audible sighs of relief.  One voice raised a moan of agony.  Mine.  That
blessed, cursed breeze had blown out the candles!

     The rest of the evening was agony.  Samantha did not light her candles
again, nor did she raise her binoculars to look in my direction.  I looked
toward her almost to the total exclusion of CARMEN.  While the stage was alight
I could only see a vague ghost of her yellow dress through the darkness. 
During the inter-act breaks I drank her in like she was cold water to my
parched throat, but she never looked at me.

     The opera was over at 2 AM and 

     When the show was over Darlene and I crushed and elbowed our way down and
out of the arena.  I tried to find Samantha in the mob, but it was impossible. 

       After taking Darlene back to the hotel I thought about trying to sleep
but I knew it was hopeless so I left the hotel and went for a walk down the
ancient sleeping streets of Verona.
Perhaps I was subconsciously looking for Samantha, but, she was gone forever,
and that broke my heart.  I consoled myself with memories and now, in a way, I
am glad I didn't find her.  Now I will always have the memory  of the perfect
English girl of Verona.
THE END