The Eyes of Midnight

I think the first time I saw her, she was sitting in an airport gate, just in front of the gate I was going toward. I was randomly people watching, like people do in airports, and she was looking bored and disinterested, like people do at airports. I say I think it was the first time I saw her because when I saw her in the airport, I had the overwhelming sense that I had seen her before.

Which was especially surprising, given the fact that she was nondescript in every way. She was small, in size, features and manner. She looked almost like a child, and seemed to blend in with the chair so that she was nearly invisible. Yet for some reason she caught my eye, and as I briefly stared at her as I walked by, she glanced up and looked back at me. She looked back down quickly. It almost looked like she stifled a smile.

I looked away and continued walking to my boarding gate, but I positioned myself so that I could still see her in the adjacent area. That vantage point was really too far away to help me figure out why she looked so familiar, but it struck me that it was an exercise in futility anyway. I was sitting in an airport a thousand miles from my home, heading a thousand miles another direction, and she was probably from a thousand miles away going a thousand miles in the other direction. I guess one of the intriguing things about people watching in airports is that it is extremely unlikely that you would ever see the people again. It almost gives you a lonely, angsty feeling.

I was in this airport, coming from another airport, wondering about people and where I'd seen this girl before because I was going to Chicago for an art exhibit. An art exhibit that I was speaking at as an expert, because the artist is my wife Anna. Anna happens to be an internationally famous painter, who has a traveling exhibit that visits a different major city every few months. She has a very unique style and subject that has captivated the art world. Most of her work involves close up, detailed depictions of human eyes. Anna had a style of painting details into her eye paintings that had a way of defining the person being painted. The shapes and color combinations that she puts into her paintings are mesmerizing, you can look at the paintings for hours and find hidden shapes within the iris, a subtle but meaningful tint to the whites of the eyes, and a barely visible but profound refection in the pupil.

I speak on her paintings as a renowned expert, and it is my life's work to share and promote her art. She would do it herself, but Anna died over 20 years ago.

I looked up at the gate and realized that my plane had started boarding, and I looked over where the girl had been. She was gone, leaving behind a lonely seat for the next person who was coming from somewhere else on the way to somewhere else. I filed the experience away into the remote regions of my brain, where I retain a vast library of faces that I will never see again, and boarded the plane for Chicago.

I had just settled into my seat by the window when I glanced up towards the front of the plane at the line of people uncomfortably working their way down the aisle when I saw her, the girl from the adjacent gate, standing and waiting while some poor sap tried to stow his carry on. For some reason my heart skipped a beat. I watched her out of the corner of my eyes, trying to get a good look without staring.

I'm not sure how to explain my intrigue. She wasn't particularly attractive, though she had a quality about her that was cute. She appeared to be thin, but it was really hard to tell because she was dressed in unflattering, bulky clothes. She had dark hair, stuffed under a baseball cap, her skin was on the lighter side, and her facial features were sharp, from a pert nose to her prominent cheekbones. I had not yet been able to see her eyes well coming down the aisle. Years of discussing Anna's artwork had left me with a bit of an obsession with eyes, an obsession that we had shared in the brief five years we had together before she died. Anna called eyes the windows to the soul. When she painted a subject, she would spend an hour just looking into the person's eyes. She would fall into an almost spell-like trance, and then she would paint those eyes with extraordinary likeness and depth that would shock even the subject of the painting. So I had developed this weird tic of looking into people's eyes to search their soul. I didn't have Anna's knack for it though, I just tended to look creepy staring into the eyes of strangers.

As she continued to move down the aisle towards me, I began to be aware of the fact that the two seats beside me were empty, and she had not yet taken a seat. Each aisle she passed made me increasingly tense, wondering if she was destined for my aisle, or perhaps right beside me. I was in the middle of the plane, so it was just as likely that she would be sitting 20 rows behind me.

When she reached the row in front of me, she glanced up at the seat numbers and I saw the recognition in her eyes that she had reached her aisle. My heart nearly stopped when she turned towards me and began putting her small bag into the overhead bin. She nodded and smiled slightly to me and I did the same, then she took the aisle seat, leaving an open space between us.

I spent the rest of what seemed like an extraordinarily long boarding sequence praying that no one else took the middle seat. I had an odd flashback to a time when Anna was still alive, when she had just started to become famous and we would fly to big cities for her shows. She hated having someone in that third seat on the row, so much so that one time she bought three tickets and we only used two, just so she wouldn't have some obnoxious person beside us.

While it appeared that every other seat on the plane was full, somehow I got lucky and no one sat in the seat between us. As the plane took off and I thought about clever ways to start up a conversation. I was actually a bit nervous about talking with this girl who had captured my attention so mysteriously.

I noticed that her pocketbook was slightly open, and hanging out of it was a small book, The Eyes of Art. I recognized it immediately, because I was the author. It was a non fiction book I had written about my wife's work, no literary feat and no best seller. I figured that despite the popularity of the subject, there had only been a few thousand sold.

"Believe it or not, I have a copy of that book myself," I said, pointing to the book.

She looked pretty surprised, probably thinking I was lying. "This book?" she asked pulling it out of the bag.

"Yes, that one," I said. I took the book from her, flipped it to the back page, and pointed to the picture of me in the bio on the back inside cover. "I know the guy who wrote it."

She looked at the picture, then looked at me, quickly putting it together that we were the same person. Her mouth came open in surprise. "Wow, how's that for a coincidence...what are the odds?"

"Definitely a long shot," I said. "I wrote this book about ten years ago, my wife Anna is the artist featured in the book. Was the artist," I corrected.

"Yes, I've read the book, I'm sorry for your loss," she said.

One of the pitfalls of having someone famous for a spouse, someone famous who dies, is that nearly every conversation you have with most anyone familiar starts with them telling you they are sorry for your loss. After 20 years, I had narrowed my response down to a simple nod.

"I am on my way to Chicago to speak on Anna's work at an art gallery," I said.

Her mouth came open again. "I am going to Chicago to see that exhibit! I love her work! I saw a magazine article last month and was blown away by the style. It's like nothing I've ever seen before."

I knew the article she was referring to, it was a national art magazine that had prominently featured Anna's work. The article had pointed out how widely successful her paintings had continued to be, despite such a short work career and being dead for over 20 years. The impact of the article had been strong, I had been contacted by dozens of galleries to talk about exhibiting her work.

"It really is a very unique style," I said. "I never get tired of talking about it."

My experience on airplane conversations is that the vast majority are brief, shallow interactions. Occasionally the right two people will be seated together, and catch each other in the right mood, and the conversation becomes intriguing and you almost wish the flight wouldn't end. This conversation quickly became the latter.

Her name was Sara, she called herself a wanna-be artist. She was 22 years old, studying art and this was the first trip she had ever taken to see an art exhibit. We spent a lot of time talking about Anna's work, and I was quite impressed with how knowledgeable she was about the work, and also how insightful she was. I had also noted, painfully, that Sara was 22 years old, the exact age that Anna had been when she died, which was also exactly 22 years ago.

As I talked with her I noted that she was more attractive than I had initially thought. She was quite small and thin, her skin was on the lighter side and was very smooth, her nose was sharp and pert and she had cute dimples when she smiled. Her eyes were a bit of a disappointment, and as I mentioned before, eyes were a big deal to me. She had deep, brown eyes, almost black, and there were few if any variations of color and depth.

I had a bad habit of comparing everyone to Anna, even though she had been gone for over 20 years. She was a striking beauty, though she didn't think she was pretty at all. Her most intriguing feature was her eyes, which were undoubtedly the source for her artistic ventures. Anna had heterochromia, a fairly rare condition where her eyes were different colors. One eye was a mixture of blue and one was a mixture of brown, and they were the most unique eyes I've ever seen before or since. She had an amazing range of color and shapes within her irises, and they would change based on the light she was in. Her most famous paintings were the ones she did of her own eyes.

Those eyes were indeed memorable. Sara mentioned that she had spent hours looking at the detail of Anna's self portraits. She was going into the details of Anna's eyes when the captain announced we would be landing soon. It had to be the fastest flight I had ever been on. I couldn't quite put my finger on why, but I was utterly captivated, almost nervous talking to this young girl who was half my age and clearly out of my league. I'm not a bad looking guy, I have stayed fit over the years, but I had no great pretensions that a girl in her early 20s would be interested in a guy pushing middle age. I guess a guy can dream though, and I couldn't help but do just that.

All good things must come to an end though, and we went from our pleasant chat to the hustle and bustle of getting off an airplane, finding luggage and trying to figure out how to leave. We bumped into each other a few times during the process, and said that we would see each other later that night at the gallery event.

Now would seem like an appropriate time to bring up a few significant facts about myself. Anna and I had met when we were 15, and we had spent less than a month together before we were convinced that we were soul mates. We enjoyed the same things, we did the same things, we thought the same way. Sometimes it seemed like we were two parts of a half. We married at 17, against the wishes of both of our families, and began to pursue our artistic dreams. She was almost immediately successful, and by the time she was 20 had begun to get a following. Her talent was so far beyond mine that I gladly stepped back into the role of promoting her work, rather than creating my own. She was quite prolific in her brief years. When she tackled a project, she would become obsessed, almost hypnotic, and paint non stop until the vision was complete.

Just as she was becoming internationally known, we were driving across town and got t-boned by a drunk driver at midnight. She was killed instantly, I was in a coma for a few months. When I woke up, my whole life had changed. I had long term physical problems, I suffered head injuries that had some odd effects on my life, and worst of all, I had lost my soul mate. I spent five years recovering physically, another five years recovering emotionally, and the last dozen years, well, just going through the motions. I had dedicated my life after Anna's death to promoting her work, and that was really the sole focus on my existence. I was not interested in finding another soul mate, or relationships, or even finding someone to date. This is going to sound crazy, but in the 22 years that Anna had been gone, I had not had sex with another person.

I checked in at my hotel near the gallery, made the necessary calls and collapsed on the bed. I had enough time to take a solid nap before my speech and wasn't going to waste the opportunity. My last thought before dozing off was to wonder if Sara was staying the night in Chicago.

I woke up on the bed with a start, and realized it was from a noise coming from the bathroom. Someone else was in the room. Just as I was standing to walk toward the bathroom, the door opened and out came Anna, dressed to the nines and putting on an earring as she walked towards me. She looked fantastic.

"Better get going," she smiled. "You don't want to be late."

I smiled back at her. I was having one of my dreams that Anna was alive again. This happened to me so often through the years that it didn't even phase me anymore. These were the dreams that allowed me to never have any reason to pursue any other relationships, or even have sex. I had actually reached the point where I could control my dreams, I could keep myself from waking up so that we could spend time together, and more importantly, I had become so adept at controlling my dreams that I could manipulate the characters in my dreams to do what I wanted. I lived in a dream world where I could have whatever I wanted, whoever I wanted, and however I wanted. I didn't need reality.

While I had to work at it to gain this ability, I think it was in part due to the brain damage that I suffered in the accident. As I mentioned, my head injuries in the wreck caused some odd effects, and this was the biggest. My brain had been damaged in one way but had simultaneously developed an incredible skill.

So Anna would come to me in dreams, and we would talk, and laugh, and enjoy each other just as before. Sometimes it almost seemed like she knew it was a dream too, but we didn't talk about that, we just enjoyed the time we had. We also had sex, and when you are in complete control of all the images and words and people, sex is pretty fantastic. Imagine being able to do whatever you wanted in your dreams and have other characters look and act the way you want. I could instantly change their hair color, or have them suddenly change into sexy lingerie. I could make them taller or fitter or tanner or whatever. I could give myself a 12 inch cock. I could bring in a third party and have a threeway. Since I controlled the dream, I could control Anna's reactions, so if we had group sex with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, she would enthusiastically enjoy it, and so would they. If I wanted to, I could have Anna suddenly grow an attractive cock and rub it up against mine as I licked and sucked her breasts. I'm not saying I have done that, not saying I haven't, just saying I could. It was realistic, fabulous fulfillment of every fantasy, guilt free.

And here she was, visiting me in my hotel room.

"I'm almost ready," I said, standing up to wrap my arms around her in a warm embrace. I could feel her, hold her, and smell her. The only shortfall of my dreams was that I could never manage to focus on her eyes. When I looked into her eyes, they became fuzzy and unfocused. If I looked away, they seemed to sharpen, but as soon as I looked back they were out of focus. So I spent a lot of time looking at her almost sideways.

She looked fantastic, in a silky black dress that I often dreamed she was wearing. It came up to about mid thigh and showed off her toned and tanned legs, my second favorite thing about her. It also showed just a hint of cleavage up top, and when I wished it I could see her nipples through the fabric.

I effortlessly moved the dream in the direction I wanted. I chose to be sitting naked on the edge of the bed, in a candlelit hotel room. I chose to have an impressive eight inch cock (no reason to overdo it) and chose to be semi aroused, so that my cock hung heavy in front of Anna's face. I chose to have her look at me hungrily, licking her lips for a moment, before she moved in and softly kissed my cock, first one side, then the other, then softly again on either side of the head. Then I had her lick the head, her tongue long and full, so long in fact that it could twirl around my cock. My cock quickly became fully aroused, and she had to move up on her knees to take me enthusiastically into her mouth. It didn't take long for my orgasm to well up inside me, and when I came it was like an exploding firehose, the volume and intensity ridiculously well beyond reality. I came in volumes, coating Anna's chest with a thick white cream.

"Wow, I think you've missed me," she smiled, as she dragged her index finger across her chest, scooping up some of the milky liquid and sliding her finger seductively into her mouth.

"I always miss you," I replied. "You need to visit more often."

She smiled and leaned back away from me, she was naked now. She took another handful of the creamy white coating on her chest and used it as a warm lube as she rubbed it on her pussy.

"I'm here anytime," she said.

"I wish I could see your eyes," I said.

She blushed and looked away. She was back in her little black dress again, looking clean and beautiful and ready to go to the art show. After a moment she raised her eyes back up towards mine, and I gasped as I suddenly realized that for the first time in over 20 years of dreams, I could see her eyes, one brown, one blue, both glowing up at me. As I recovered from the initial shock, my eyes refocused, and suddenly I realized that I wasn't looking at Anna anymore. The reason I could see her eyes was that it wasn't her. It was Sara, looking up at me warmly.

I jolted awake to find myself alone on the bed in the hotel room. Where did that come from, I thought. Before I could figure that out I got a wake up call from the front desk, and I had to get ready for the show.

In the short walk to the art gallery, I couldn't stop thinking about Sara and the dream. I had been controlling my dreams so completely for so long it was shocking to have something change unexpectedly. I had to admit that it was a pleasant surprise, I was wishing I hadn't been startled awake.

The art show and my presentation went quite well, it was a script I had been doing so long I could have done it in my sleep. Meet the important people, have the usual conversations, give the speech that I have given once a month for the past five years. My favorite part of the entire process was watching people look at the paintings before and after the presentation, they were often visibly amazed and moved at Anna's work. It made me feel good that her work was still having an impact on people.

One thing I didn't see was Sara, not before, during or after the presentation, and I spent a lot of time looking. There were several hundred people at the event, so I easily could've missed her. I had pretty much given up as I watched the crowd thinning out. I found myself standing in front of a large painting of Anna's eyes, gazing into her eyes and remembering what it was like to look into them earlier, in the dream.