Olympia

She was so perfect.
He couldn't believe his luck.
Her electric blue eyes fixed him from the other side of the room. As
he let the faintest motion of his lips indicate a smile, those
fantastic eyes narrowed in an answering silent laughter together with
a dazzling smile. His heart jumped.

He had noticed her a couple of weeks earlier as she stepped out of
the Merchford Building, carrying a small bag carelessly over her
shoulder. No, not stepped - danced...! The spring in her steps made
her flow over the concrete, and he remembered admiring the light tap
of her heel followed by the smooth motion onto the balls of her
dainty feet. He had finished the tepid coffee in a single draught,
paid the waitress and hurried out into the street to catch a glimpse
of her and where she was heading. As he came out of the coffee-shop
and craned his neck over the heads of the lunch crowd she was gone.
An unfamiliar sense of loss hit him so hard that nothing else seemed
to matter anymore, and the rest of the day he brooded in silence,
unwilling and unable to speak of it to anyone.

The next day he was on post in the coffee-shop again, heart thumping
out of eagerness and expectation. On the strike of 12.02, the sun
broke out from the clouds as she appeared like a dream vision, long,
blonde hair swirling down her back, and face beaming at the day ahead
of her. This time he didn't waste time, but was out of the door
before she had left the steps of the building. He stayed behind her
until she reached the door of her house, not too close, but not too
far, just so he could enjoy the sway of her hair, her dancing gait
and the lovely sway of her hips.

This continued for some time - how long he did not register.
Obsessive? Perhaps. At that time, he didn't care, just couldn't
imagine a nobody like himself being involved with such a lovely
creature, clearly not of this world.

Her name was Olympia.
She was a dancer at the Merchford Dancing Company since a month, and
had already appeared in several musical numbers as a singing member
of the chorus line.
She was perfect.
She lived alone. He had never ventured into her apartment building,
he just knew.
She went shopping once a week, and only once. Her shopping list was
the same every time: two apples, two pears, an avocado, a pint of
skim milk and a loaf of white bread.
She took technical dancing classes at the Merchford Building every
day between 9 and 12. She was never late, never early, and according
to the doorman of the building, her performance never failed.
Simply perfect.

At the evening of the opening party of the Company's latest
show, 'L'Ingenue', in which she played the main part for the first
time, he sneaked in, and armed with a glass of champagne, he settled
in a corner to just watch. That was what he had done for the greater
part of an hour, when she had set her lovely, lovely eyes on him. His
heart swelled and threatened to come up through his throat as she
flashed her smile at him and treaded through the crowds in the room.
The sound level in the room was high as it was after a successful
performance, but it was dimmed into a distant murmur as the sun
entered his life. Eyes sparkling, outshining even the prisms of the
crystal chandelier, she stood before him, a mere ten inches away. He
swallowed.

- Shall we go?

Just like that. He couldn't muster an answer, and must have looked a
downright fool, but all she did was take him by the arm, and flow out
of the room, through the doors, smiling and winking her way out of
the grand party as a departing queen, none of the dozens of
journalists, photographers, waiters, singers, dancers, patrons, men
and women even noticing a grey mouse like him by her side.

He didn't even remember them walking through the empty streets to her
flat, but suddenly all that was, was her, standing close to him in
the middle of the one room of her home. The flat was spartanly
furnished - a dancing bar in one corner, a cupboard, presumably for
clothes in another. The place was impeccable, the floorboards cold
under his bare feet. His mind turned to her, and he heard in the back
of her head the soft tunes of one of her precious operas playing on a
music machine, as she stretched out her arms towards him.

Her hands were cool to the touch, but his skin was almost on fire.
She drew him into a slow dance and the coolness of her fingers
transformed into burn-marks of his waist and the small of his back,
as she twirled them around. Slowly at first, his joy the only fuel
for his feet and legs to move him at all, his treacherous heart once
again thumping like a machine in his chest. She eased him into her
arms and he shuddered with bliss as he felt her hard, slim body
against the length of his own.

Feet stepped over feet. Legs moved around. Arms entwined, eyes
twinkling in the moonlight through the window. The music accelerated
and she followed suit. It was she who was the expert, and sleepily he
let himself integrate into her dance, growing faster and hotter. Her
eyes fixed him all through the motion, eerily enough still shining
electrically through the darkness.

Was she even breathing? His own breath grew shallow during their
dance and he could see it come out in short puffs in the chill air of
the flat. Herself, she wasn't even sweating, still appearing as cool
and perfect as the very first day she had stepped - no, danced - into
his life. He tried to slow her down, still unable to speak, but her
grip around him hardened like he was stuck in a vice, and a tiny
speck of fear lit up in his chest.

Round and round they went, her motion no longer appearing human by
look, her breath non-existent, her skin still cold to the touch. The
blue of her eyes now seemed no other than just electric. The speck of
fear grew to a seed, which grew into a stone, which forced the swell
of his heart to subside into a silent screaming panic. Round and
round they went, the music a deafening crescendo, his panic mixing
with nausea into an intoxicating cocktail.

Before he lost consciousness, he was strangely reminded of a proverb he
heard once long ago: "Trust eyes before ears". Such deceptive eyes.