Poor Steve!
There he sat, stone deaf to Lute’s coarse humor and right back in the heart of his night of dreams. Someone had played a dreadful trick on him, someone who knew his heart inside out and had transformed his Spectre Maiden into flesh and blood not six feet in front of him! All the floodlights in the world were trained on him as he sat there paralyzed, unable to move or speak or even think.
There was no doubt about it. This was the woman of his dreams. The resemblance was uncanny. Her salient features that had struck him so indelibly that night were all there before his eyes. Every one of them! She was sitting across from him, not exactly with her back towards him, but off to the right a little so that he could see a hint of the profile of her face. The last thing he wanted was for the guys to divine his secret, so he shifted his eyes to his soup bowl and stared at it blankly, stealing furtive glances up at her without moving his head.
Her golden hair fell to just above her slender shoulders in soft flowing waves, in a word, altogether right, just like what he could see of her face. Everything about her struck him as wondrously pure and mild. Her skin was radiant and bronzed from the summer sun, contrasting joyously with her hair. Her blouse was the solid blue of a deep woodland pond in early evening, and her full skirt was a clean white except for a bit of embroidery work around the hem. Her movements were flowing and graceful. When she spoke, the gentle sound of her voice melted his heart. Once he caught her looking to the left and smiling at a table companion. It was a warm and inviting smile. It sent shivers up and down Steve’s spine.
Tom was the one who picked up on what was happening to Steve. He had seen that first look of incredulous astonishment on Steve’s face and had followed it to its object at the next table. Curious, he studied her with his usual unconcealed frankness. Yes, she was quite a dish, all right. It was understandable that someone like Steve might give her a second look. She’s nothing that Lute or Ted would go in for, he told himself, except for that face and hair and that nutmeg complexion. They want those top-heavy models. This one probably has very dainty breasts that turn up on the ends a little like her nose. Those two licentious louts have to have plenty of beef to be happy…. Man, that face of hers is gorgeous, though. And what a smile! She seems so innocent, and so, so beautiful….
He turned and winked at Steve who was too absorbed in his own world to wink back.
The fellows were in no hurry to get out of the dining hall that evening, for obvious reasons. It was a good thing. Steve was virtually chained to his chair. After some twenty minutes the girls at the opposite table shifted around a little and rose to leave. Steve watched her get up and lift her tray. His heart skipped a beat. She was a good two or three inches shorter than Steve’s five-foot-nine-inch frame, yet she truly was a long and lovely angel.
“Come on, Cecilia,” he heard someone urge.
“Sure. I’m coming,” she replied, low and eager.
An angel, yes! marveled Steve to himself. “My angel,” he said out loud but very softly, his eyes watering up as he watched her gracefully move away.
It would be truthful to say that from this moment on, Steve’s former dream world became his new reality, and his former reality simply faded away into irrelevance.