"But mostly you wanted to be a fairy."

She was surprised he had remembered. "Yes. Fairies were my favorites. A fairy isn't afraid of anything," Lizabeth said. "A fairy just grabs life by the throat."

"That's not what I heard. I heard fairies were outrageously promiscuous. I heard they grabbed life about two and a half feet lower."

"Hmmmm. Well, I suppose there are all kinds of fairies, just as there are all kinds of carpenters. Some are undoubtedly more sexually oriented than others."

Five

Lizabeth snatched her clock in the darkened room and held the luminous dial close to her face. One-thirty. And Elsie was still sitting in the rocking chair by the window. "Aunt Elsie," Lizabeth said. "If you're that desperate to see a naked man I'll rent you one. I swear, if you'll just go to bed I'll thumb through the yellow pages first thing in the morning. I might even be able to find one that dances or does aerobics."

Elsie rocked with her feet flat and her knees spread. She got a good push off that way. "You know what's wrong with these damn perverts?" she said. "You can't count on them. No consideration for other people." She rocked forward in front of the sheer white curtains and back into the black shadows. She rocked steady as a metronome. "Grrrch," the chair went back. "Slap," her feet hit the floor coming forward. "Grrrch," "slap," "grrrch," "slap," "grrrch," "slap."

Lizabeth buried her face in the pillow and groaned. She had to go to work tomorrow. She needed sleep. She needed peace and quiet. She wasn't used to old ladies rocking the night away in a corner of her room. "He's flashed for two nights now," Lizabeth said. "Maybe he's tired. Maybe he's taking a night off."

"Damn pervert," Elsie said. "He should be locked up. He should be ashamed of himself for going around terrorizing defenseless women."

"You don't seem very terrorized," Lizabeth observed.

"Yeah, but I'm a Hawkins. You know us Hawkinses are tougher than most. It takes more than a naked man to terrorize a Hawkins."

A stone pinged at the window and Elsie stopped rocking. There was silence in the room while both women held their breath, waiting for another stone to hit. Lizabeth crept from her bed and pulled the curtain aside. A spot of light slid across the window, briefly illuminating Lizabeth. There was darkness for a moment, and then the flasher turned the light on himself.

Elsie let out a small gasp. "Well, will you look at that!" she whispered. "The man's standing there just as bold as could be in his birthday suit!" Her eyes narrowed. "The nerve of that man! Don't this beat all." She moved a fraction of an inch closer to the window. "Is that all he does? He just stands there?"

"Yup."

"Don't it get boring?"

"Yup."

Elsie watched him for a moment longer. "I suppose it's a good thing he's not dangerous. If he were dangerous I'd feel like I had to get my forty-five and blast him one."

"Don't even think about it. Nobody's getting blasted from my window."

"Nothing to worry about. I don't shoot to kill. I always aim for the privates. Nothing a pervert hates more than to get shot in the privates."

"Yeah," Lizabeth said, trying not to smile. "That'd put a crimp in his style."

Elsie mournfully shook her head. "I'm a pretty good shot, but I'd have a hard time with this guy-he hasn't got much of a target. No wonder the poor man wears a bag over his head." She looked hopefully at her niece. "Don't it ever get more exciting?"

"Not so far."

"Well," Elsie said, "thank heaven for small favors." She grasped the screen and slid it up into the top half of the window so she could lean out. "Hey, you damn pervert," she yelled at the man. "You should be ashamed of yourself, going around showing everybody your business. Haven't you got anything better to do than to stand there looking like a damn fool?"

There was an audible gasp of breath from the flasher, the light blinked out, and the man ran off, crashing through the juniper and azalea bushes that bordered the backyard.

"Ow," Elsie said, "that's gotta smart."

"I should never have told you," Lizabeth shouted after Matt. "You're making a mountain out of a molehill."

Matt looped a length of electrical cable over his shoulder. "That's what Elsie said. But I don't care what body proportions this flasher has, I don't want him coming near you." He handed a two-hundred-watt floodlight to his electrician and pointed to the large oak at the rear of Lizabeth's property. "I want a flood installed there and the cable run underground. I want one at either end of the house…"

"This is my house," Lizabeth said, running to keep up with Matt. "You can't just come into my yard and take over. You can't tell me what to do with my house."

"When's your birthday?"

"November third."

He grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her to him. He kissed her long and hard and released her. "Happy birthday," he said. "It wouldn't be polite to refuse a birthday present, would it?"

"I don't like being bullied."

"You're not being bullied," Matt said. "You're being protected. And if this doesn't scare him off, I'm moving in."

Lizabeth stuffed her fists onto her hips and glared at him. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."

Matt handed the cable to the electrician. "I want a switch installed in her bedroom and in the kitchen." He looked down at Lizabeth and grinned. "Damned if you aren't cute when you get all riled up like this."

"And another thing: You kept calling me 'honey' at work today. What will the men think?"

"I wouldn't worry about it. None of those men think while they're working."

"And it was very nice of you to have that fancy restaurant cater lunch for me, but I felt a little conspicuous."

"I swear, I didn't order the violin player," Matt said, raising his hand. "They threw him in as a bonus."

Lizabeth shot him an intensely peeved look.

"All right, all right. I admit, I've gone off the deep end. I have this horrible compulsion to do things for you. I can't control myself. Boy, I tell you, love is hell."

"Oh yeah? If it's such hell why don't you sound more miserable? You've been looking absolutely smug all day. And predatory. I have a cat. I've watched Wild Kingdom. I know predatory when I see it."

"I have a plan," Matt said.

He was wearing a navy T-shirt with the sleeves cut out, and it tucked into jeans that were almost white from wear. The jeans had a frayed, horizontal slash across the knee and were perfectly molded to masculine bulges and hard, muscular thighs. He smelled like pine sawdust and musk, and Lizabeth thought he was the sexiest thing she'd ever seen. If his plan was half as enticing as his perfect butt, she was in big trouble. "What's the plan?"

'You might not want to hear it. It involves sweaty, naked bodies… ours. And there's this part where you're on fire-internally, of course-and you're begging me to make hard, passionate love to you."

"That's not a plan. That's a fantasy."

Matt smiled. "Not the way I see it."

Elsie pulled into the driveway in her big blue and white Cadillac. She levered herself out of the car, took a grocery bag from the front seat, and started across the lawn. "What's going on here?" she said. "What's all the fuss about?"

Lizabeth took the bag from her. "Matt's having lights installed around the house for security purposes."

Elsie smiled broadly, creasing her face. "Good idea. It was a shame we had to miss that guy bashing his way through the azalea bushes last night."

"It's a waste of time and money," Lizabeth said. "Hell probably never come back. And besides, it's supposed to rain tonight. No one would be dumb enough to flash in the rain."

Eight hours later, Lizabeth admitted she'd been wrong about the flasher. There seemed to be no limit to his stupidity. Rain softly pattered on the windowpane and ran in narrow rivulets down the screen while Lizabeth and Elsie peered out at the bedraggled exhibitionist. His paper-bag mask sat limp and wet on his head, his tie was plastered to his chest, and his docksiders were sunk a good inch and a half in mud.

Elsie slowly shook her head. "That's pathetic."

"He seems a little compulsive about this flashing stuff," Lizabeth said. "I really didn't think he'd show."

"Yeah, you gotta give him something for hanging in there. The man's no quitter."

Lizabeth gnawed on her lower lip. "You think we should throw an umbrella out to him?"

"No," Elsie said, "I kinda like watching him drip. Let's see what he looks like with the floods on him." She reached over and flipped the switch, and the yard was bathed in an eerie wash of white light.

For the first time, the man's arms and legs and shoulders were clearly revealed. Lizabeth thought he seemed much more naked and sadly vulnerable. He took a step backward, then turned and ran around the far side of the house. "This was mean," Lizabeth said. "I think we scared him."

Elsie closed the curtains and stepped back from the window. "You know, as far as perverts go, he isn't much."

Lizabeth smeared joint compound over the last nail in the drywall and stuffed the wooden handle of her six-inch taping knife into her back pocket. Rain thrummed on the roof of the half-finished house and beat against the newly installed Thermopanes, and the cloying smell of wet wood and joint compound mingled with the pungent aroma of freshly turned earth. It was three o'clock, and the light filtering into the upstairs bedroom was weak. It would have been a dismal day, Lizabeth thought, if she hadn't been working side by side with Matt. He had a way of filling a room so that even the most barren space seemed snug and inviting.