The Girl In the Gondola
By Ernest Winchester
Copyright: 2010 By Ernest Winchester
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The Girl In the Gondola
She wore dark sunglasses and a string of faux pearls. She wore nothing else. She ignored me. I couldn’t ignore her. As impolite as I knew it was, I couldn’t remove my eyes from her naked body. Such a thing of perfection. I know, a woman shouldn’t be referred to as a thing, but she had all the allure of a Greek or Roman statue with none of the coldness of marble or granite. She stood at the edge of the gondola railing, her right hand on the top handrail. The angle at which she stood allowed me a full view of her well-sculpted ass, but she was turned in such a way that I also had a full vision of her left breast. It too looked as if an artisan well schooled in the female form had molded it. I gave a silent thanks to her maker. She didn’t seem to care that I stared. Obviously she was an exhibitionist. To stand blatantly exposed before a stranger with no apparent embarrassment indicated that.
I hadn’t noticed her at first. I had been enjoying the view out across the mountain terrain as the cable car swung out of the lower station before glancing back inside to see her standing there in all her radiant beauty. For many startled minutes after, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
After several minutes, I managed to look away and glanced around the gondola. I expected to see her clothes on a nearby seat. There weren’t any. Absently, I wondered what she was going to do when the mountain ski lift reached its summit. I also wondered why I hadn’t noticed her as I entered the car at the foot of the mountain. I’m sure I would have noticed such a vision, even if she were clothed then. It was summer; so fewer people rode the cable cars to the top, as there would have been in the winter ski season. In Europe I suppose, such sights weren’t unusual. They are not as uptight as we Americans. I guessed that she was not cold although the sight of her brought a slight shiver to my body. And more than a shiver to certain parts of it. But I expected the temperature would be cooler at the summit and feared she would be uncomfortable when we arrived there.
She and I were the only passengers in the car and I wondered how I was so lucky to be allowed the show she was so obligingly giving me. Despite the display she presented, I couldn’t help wonder why she was so brazen. I also wondered if she was high on something. That could present a problem if she were to suddenly come out of it and realize where she was and the condition she was in. She was safe with me, though she would have no way of knowing that. Had I been a rapist she would have been defenseless alone with me in the transport. Any escape would have been many hundreds of feet down as we passed over a ravine.
I glanced off in the same direction that she was looking. The view was spectacular, but so was the view inside the car. It easily drew my attention back. After a few minutes, she leaned over the handrail to stare straight down. I feared she might loose her balance but she was short enough that most of her torso was well centered on the inside of the rail.
As we passed over the rollers of one of the support towers, the gondola shook rather violently. This caused all of the supple areas of flesh on the girl’s body to quiver and I didn’t miss a single jiggle. My pants grew tighter and I was forced to pivot on my seat to relieve some of the pressure.
She glanced up at the cables that supported the car and turned to step toward the door. A moment of panic swept through me as she reached for the handle of the door. If she was indeed stoned, she might not realize the danger she would be in if she opened the door. I knew that the door opened outwardly. One slip and she might be swept out in the strong winds that swayed the car.
“Miss, ah, miss.” I said, fearful that I might be breaking into whatever reverie or trance she was in. If she got the door open I couldn’t imagine what I would grab to keep her in the gondola. I rose part way from the bench, not sure just what to do.
She tried the door handle, but to my relief, it didn’t budge. I vaguely recalled the attendant closing the door after I had entered the car, hearing a solid click that I now assumed locked the door so that it couldn’t be opened again until an attendant unlocked it at the top.
Seconds after I had called out, she turned to look in my direction. Unable to see her eyes through the dark glasses, I couldn’t be sure if she was yet aware of my being there.
“Miss, are you alright?” I asked, as I settled uneasily back on the bench, shifting again to relieve the pressure, for looking at her now full frontal, heightened my appreciation of her body.
She paused for several seconds before answering. “Yes, I’m okay.” And she moved back to the front of the car.
As much as I hated the next question, I knew I had to ask. “Where are your clothes?”
She glanced down at herself and I feared she might freak when she noticed that she was naked.
“My boyfriend has them.” She made no effort to cover herself so I was contented to continue enjoying the display.
“Is he at the top?”
“No, he’s down there.” She nodded to indicate the ground below.
Several things crossed through my mind at that point. Was he some kind of nut, sending his girlfriend off on a naked frolic? Was he down there somewhere watching through binoculars to get his kicks looking at her naked body at the rail? Was this some sort of sex play that they indulged in to heighten the thrill of a nooner? Things like this never happened in America, certainly not to me.
“So, you’re going to stay on to go back down?” I didn’t see her holding a ticket stub like the one I had in my jacket pocket. She would need that for the return trip.
“No, I’m going to join him.” Her voice was flat and I became all the more convinced that she was high. The wording of her last statement, however, sent a renewed shiver through me. If he wasn’t at the top, but only vaguely down there somewhere, then how would she join him…?
I could tell that I wasn’t going to get an acceptable answer out of her as I noted the end of the trip was rapidly approaching. Stay on, or get off; either way she was going to be quite a show at one end or the other of the ride.
When the gondola passed into the shadow of the upper station, the sudden loss of bright sunlight dulled my vision and my eyes had not adjusted before I heard the attendant unlock the door.
“Well sir, did you enjoy the view coming up?” The attendant’s voice broke into my trance. He said it mechanically, as if he recited it at every gondola’s arrival.
“Oh God, more than you know.”
The worker was holding the door open. I wasn’t sure if the girl was going to exit the car, so I hesitated. I smiled, anticipating seeing the reaction of the worker when he spotted the naked girl before I looked around to get her response.
“Sir, end of the line.”
“I don’t know if she’s getting out.”
“Who, sir?”
“The girl.” I glanced around, but I couldn’t see her.
“Sir, you are the only one in the car.” The attendant tapped the display mounted on the wall with his fingertip. A luminous, electronic ‘one’ was displayed under the number of the gondola.
“But…” I stammered as I paused to look around one more time.
A loud bell sounded.
“Sir, I need to close the door so it can go on. You can’t ride beyond this point.” I stepped out, still very muddled.
He closed the door and the large, brightly colored box slowly swung around the huge overhead wheel to stop on the other side to allow the three people waiting there to enter the gondola.
“But the girl? She must still be in there.”
“Was she naked?” His voice suddenly sounded incredulous.
“So, you did see her?” I said, as I noticed that his eyes were suddenly wide, so I assumed he had.
“No, sir. I wish! I hear she’s really beautiful.”
“But…I don’t understand.”
“Too bad you didn’t get a picture.” The attendant said, pointing to the camera slung over my shoulder. It was the reason I had come to the top of the mountain—to get pictures of the panoramic view.
“Yeah, too bad. She is very beautiful. So, who is she? Or, or what is she?”
“I’ve heard she was a girl who jumped to her death because her boyfriend left her. Or maybe they jumped together—a lovers’ leap perhaps. I forget the details. It was before my time here, so I’m not sure. She only appears to men in that numbered gondola around noon, and only if the man is alone in the car. I’ve heard that some of the men claimed they saw her jump. They come out of the car really shaken. Some people say it’s an optical illusion because of the sun overhead. It doesn’t happen very often. You are one lucky guy. Sure wish you’d taken a picture though.”
“Yeah, me too.” I said, wondering if her image could have been captured. “But I’m sure of one thing. She’s no optical illusion.”
The End