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From: Al Steiner <steiner_al@hotmail.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} NEW: Aftermath by Al Steiner-Chapter 3 (FM) 4/5
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Aftermath 3 4/5
Send comments to steiner_al@hotmail.com
Missing chapters can be found at www.storiesonline.net



"I still think we should put him back out of town," Dale said when the
table was opened for discussion.  "I don't like him and I don't trust
him.  He snuck in here in the middle of the night and God only knows
what his intentions are.  We have too much to protect in this town to
be taking in strangers."

"I have to agree with Dale," Jessica said when he was finished.  "While
he has proved himself to be knowledgeable in the matter of defending
our bridge, I think that the cost of feeding him and his companions is
too high to pay for a few good ideas.  As I said earlier, we don't even
have enough food to feed the people that we have here already for more
than a few months.  We don't have the luxury of taking in outsiders."

"I think we should take him," Paul said.  "Neither I nor anyone else in
this town knows the least bit about defending us from attack.  We can
put up basic defenses, sure, we can keep out the stragglers, true, but
if there were ever any sort of organized attack upon us, we would
probably be defeated."

"You're being paranoid Paul," Jessica said.  "The stragglers are all we
have to worry about.  There is no organization out there."

"I beg to differ," Brett put in at this point.  He told them about the
bikers that had attacked Chrissie and Jason's family, killing the
parents.  He then told them about the interrogation that he had
conducted on the survivor of that firefight.  "He said there were
thirty of them and that they had automatic weapons.  That is
organization.  Those people are probably still out there somewhere and
they will probably head for towns where there are survivors to try and
secure more supplies.  They may eventually find there way to your front
door, either by coming to your bridge or by working their way up the
other side of the canyon from the west.  If they don't get here, other
groups like them will.  You cannot just assume that you will not be
attacked.  If that group comes here with your defenses as they are,
they will defeat you.  I've told you what they were trying to do to
Chrissie and Jason when I interrupted them."

"You're just trying to scare us," Dale accused.  "How do we know that
you didn't make all of that up?"

"And how do you know that he did?" Paul put in.  "Wouldn't the smarter
course be to prepare for the worst instead of to hope for the best?"

"Not to the point of paranoia," Jessica said.  "I'm sorry Paul and I'm
sorry Mr. Adams, but we've voted on the matter.  Dale and I voted not
to take any more people.  That means that you will have to be put back
out of town.  I'll have the guards lead you back across the bridge."

"No," Paul said firmly.

"Paul," Jessica said.  "We've voted!  It was two to one against you."

"You're not going to do this to me on this issue," Paul said.  "This is
not about whether or not to allow three baths per week or only two,
this is not about whether or not to increase rations or keep them where
they are.  This issue is for our very survival and I will not allow an
impulsive decision from the two of you that is probably based more on
snobbery than it is any practical matter to stand."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dale said, leaping to his feet
so fast that his chair clattered to the floor behind him.

"How DARE you!"  Jessica said, just as angrily.

"You'd better watch how the fuck you're talking to us or you're going
to be walking out with the scumbag as well!"

Brett watched this exchange carefully, with the eye of a man who had
seen a thousand angry people arguing with each other.  Never before had
the argument been so directly connected to his own survival but,
interestingly, the tones and the posturing were the same.  Jessica, and
particularly Dale, were both exaggerating their anger, yelling louder
than was necessary.  This was usually a sign that people displayed when
they were doubtful about their stated position but were afraid to show
it for fear of losing face.  Paul, on the other hand, showed the kind
of determination that came with knowing you were right.  He held his
ground, his face remaining calm.  "This is too important of a decision
to allow you two to piss away with your little voting alliance," he
said.  "This is something that needs to be decided by the entire town,
and only after they have listened to the facts.  I want Mr. Adams to
stay here tonight..."

"No!" shouted Dale.  "He is NOT staying here another minute."

"He WILL stay here," Paul said, taking a step closer to the larger
man.  Incredibly, Dale backed up.  "That is MY decision.  I will keep
him under guard in this building for the night.  I will feed him and
allow him to bathe and I will even give him fresh clothing."

"You will do no such thing," Jessica spat.  "How dare you..."

"And tomorrow," Paul went on, his voice overriding her, "we will tell
our fellow townspeople what Mr. Adams has offered us and what the cost
would be.  We will then have a town-wide vote on the matter of whether
we should sacrifice a little bit of our food supply for increased
security."

"That is not how things work in this town," Jessica said, pointing her
finger at him with short jabs.  "We are the committee and we make the
rules.  You are not free to change them just because you were outvoted
on something.  If you have a problem with that, you would do well to
remember that you were not even a resident of this town and that you
can be put out of it just as easily as your friend here."

"And you can keep in mind," said Paul, unfazed by her speech, "that YOU
two are not really liked by the other residents of this town.  They
accept your leadership Jessica because you have assumed it and none of
them wish to take it.  They accept yours Dale because you used to be
the friendly grocery store manager that they all had wet dreams about
and because you're fucking Jessica now."

"You don't need to be so crude," Jessica said, paling.

Paul ignored her.  "They accept MY leadership however, because I get
things done around here.  It was me that organized the defenses.  It
was me that set up the hot baths and the laundry area.  Now I don't
know what the result might be if you try to throw out the one member of
this committee who actually DOES anything and who is actually worth a
damn, but it could be that you might find that you are not as well-
supported as you think you are.  It could be that you two will be the
ones walking across the bridge."

Jessica crumbled under this onslaught.  Brett saw it happen in the way
that her eyes suddenly became full of doubt, in the way that her
shoulders suddenly slumped in defeat.  Paul had pushed exactly the
buttons that needed to be pushed in order to change her mind.  He had
played upon the natural insecurities that bullying people all had.

"Well," she said slowly and carefully, "since you feel THAT strongly
about this, I suppose we can make an exception to the rules just this
once.  He can stay until the morning and then I'll talk to everyone and
tell them..."

"WE will talk to everyone," Paul broke in.  "I'm not about to let you
go out there and tell your version of the story.  We'll do it together
and we'll do it objectively."

Her face angered but she controlled the outburst that she so
desperately wanted to unleash.  "Fine," she said.  "WE will go out and
talk to everyone.  But make sure you keep him guarded all night!  He is
NOT to be left alone."

"I think I can handle that," Paul said, allowing the slightest smile to
touch his face.


+++++


"Smoke?" Paul offered to Brett, holding out a red and white box of
Marlboros.

"I haven't smoked since I was in the army," he told him, waving his
hand as one does when one is holding at a blackjack table.  They were
still in the conference room although Jessica and Dale had both
departed for parts unknown.  He had just swallowed down a meal of baked
beans, cornbread, and apple sauce, easily the best he had consumed
since leaving his home in Stockton before the hunting trip.  The beans
had actually been hot!

"Yeah," Paul agreed, taking one out of the pack and putting it in his
mouth.  "They're bad for you.  Give you cancer and heart disease and
emphysema and all that."  He struck a light with a pack of matches.
"Somehow that just doesn't scare me as much as it used to."  He put the
end of the match to his smoke and took a deep drag.

"Good point," Brett agreed.  "But all the same, I'll pass."

"Suit yourself," Paul told him, leaning back in his chair a little.  He
had long since reholstered his gun and dropped his guard.

"So you were a fireman you said?"

"I was with the CDF," Paul confirmed.  "I was the captain at the
station just outside of town, near the interstate.  I lived in Penryn,
just down the hill in the valley.  My crew abandoned me once the shit
really hit the fan and tried to make it home.  They both lived in
Sacramento.  I don't know what ever became of them but they've never
shown back up here.  Some of the people in town tried to make it down
to Auburn about a week after the impact.  They say the interstate is
washed out near the gulch down there."

"Family?" Brett asked.

"Wife and two kids down in Penryn," he said a little sadly.  "I
would've gone with my crew if I'd thought there was the slightest
chance of them being still alive, but... I knew better.  I imagine my
house is under about sixty feet of water or so.   There's no way they
could've made it."

"I'm sorry," Brett said.  "Mine were back in Stockton.  I saw the water
come in from Castle Point.  There's no way that mine made it either."

They both contemplated their losses for a few minutes, Paul smoking,
Brett just staring at the wall.

"So how many people are in this town?" Brett finally asked to change
the subject.

"One hundred and eighty-three," Paul told him.  "Of which, one hundred
and sixty-two are either women or children under the age of seven."

"What?" Brett asked.  "There are only..." he tried to do the addition
in his head.

"Twenty-one men," Paul said, providing the answer.  "Not including you,
although I'm pretty sure we'll let you in once the decision is taken
out of those idiot's hands.  And not a single one of us men are FROM
this town.  We all just happened to be here because of our jobs."

"How is that possible?" Brett asked.

"It's simple," Paul told him.  "This is an upscale, higher income
town.  Or at least it was before the comet.  There was not much
diversity here like you might find in other places.  This was a very
structured, closed-minded, we-must-conform-to-the-elite-standard-of-
living kind of place.  It was the home of the lawyers, the dentists,
the investment bankers, the accountants, the doctors.  For the most
part these people were all men and they were all married.  This was not
a place where there were a bunch of unemployed men hanging around,
drinking beer and watching NASCAR on the tube.   When the impact
occurred we were smack in the middle of a Thursday afternoon,
remember?  Every last one of these men was down in the valley doing
whatever it was they did to bring home the bacon.  Now there were a lot
of women who worked in this town as well and all of them were down in
the valley as well.  There were not any jobs in town that anyone who
actually lived here would have been doing.  So what we had left after
the earthquake and the flaming rocks and the mudslides swept through,
were a bunch of high-class housewives, a few female employees from the
school or the grocery store or the library and twenty-one men whose
jobs just happened to bring them here at the particular moment that the
impact happened.

"There's me for instance, the captain of the local firehouse.  I got
put into a leadership role because I'm able to take charge of people
and figure out how to get things done.  And then there's Dale, who was
the manager of the grocery store.  He was here doing what he does and
he came into power because he was perceived as being the one who
controlled the food.  This position was strengthened because Jessica,
who was the leader of the PTA and the homeowners association and the
library committee and god knows what else, snatched him up as a
plaything before any of the other women thought to do that.  Dale's a
major pain in the ass, but he's manageable.  As for the rest of the
men, we have a few teachers from the elementary school, a few of them
were checkers at the grocery store, one worked at the gas station, one
was a pool guy, two were PG&E workers that were installing an
electrical box.  We also have a couple of landscapers that were up here
mowing lawns, a plumber that was fixing someone's pipes, even a couple
of nineteen year old Mormons that were up here doing the bicycle
rounds."

"Not ONE man was home from work for the day?" Brett asked.  "Not a
single one?"

"Not that survived anyway," Paul told him.  "Keep in mind that nearly a
third of the houses were located up on the hill over the canyon.  They
all went down in the earthquake.  Maybe some of the men were home up
there but there weren't any down here.  It's not all that surprising
when you think about the kind of people we're talking about here.  Very
conformist.  They were all office hours type of people doing their
climb up whatever ladder they were on.  There was hardly a person in
town under thirty-two years old, which means they were in the frantic
parts of their careers where they have to put in ungodly hours.  They
wouldn't have taken a day off unless they were just about dead."

"So you have a bunch of yuppie women to deal with?"

"You got it," he said.  "And I'm telling you, it's a trial.  Some of
them are pretty sharp but a lot of them are just the most stereotypical
airheads you could ever imagine.  They're women who've been used to
their good looks getting them by for all of their lives and they don't
really seem to grasp that things are a lot different now.  It seems
like every day I'm dealing with some kind of crisis about work details
or guard duties or some other task that someone has been assigned that
they think is beneath them.  I actually had one refuse to learn how to
shoot a rifle because she broke a fucking fingernail while she was
trying to load it."

"Jesus," Brett said, trying to imagine how he would have reacted to
that.  It probably wouldn't have been pretty.

"Take the issue of the baths for instance.  That was made the number
one priority when we organized and started getting our shit together.
Before we even got around to gathering weapons up and learning how to
use them, before we tackled the issue of town security, they wanted to
have a working bath that had hot water.  Can you fucking believe it?
The world collapses around them, billions of people are dead, we don't
have enough food to make it through the winter, and they demand that
someone rig them up a freakin' bathtub with running water.  I'm telling
you, sometimes it seems like it would just be easier to take a few guns
and head out on my own."

"No," Brett said, shaking his head.  "You wouldn't want to do that.
You can't imagine what its like out there unless you've been through
it.  At least you have some semblance of order in here, at least you
can tell yourself that you'll probably be alive this time next week."

"That's true," Paul sighed, crushing out his smoke in a beer can that
had been fashioned into an ashtray.  "I hope I wasn't belittling what
you've gone through with my whining.  Part of the grass is always
greener syndrome I guess."

"Don't worry about it."

"So what about these two kids you have?  You said they're still out on
the other side of the bridge.  Are they safe out there?  Should we try
to bring them in?"

"They're as safe as they can be out there," Brett said.  "I've taught
them how to build their shelter so no one will happen across it or spot
it.  They'll be under cover in there by now and they're well armed with
weapons that they know how to use.  There won't be any way to bring
them in tonight.  I told them to climb the hill in the morning and keep
an eye out for me."

"They sound like they're pretty smart," Paul said.

"They're good kids," Brett agreed, smiling as he thought of them.
"Actually, I don't have any right to call them kids anymore.  They may
be teenagers, but they've grown up since the impact."  He told Paul
about the firefight with the two hunters.

"Unbelievable," Paul said, obviously impressed.  "You took two
teenagers that had never held a gun in their lives and turned them into
an infantry squad.  I wish I could do that with my people.  I'm afraid
your experience with the bridge guards and the two that captured you is
more the rule than the exception. They volunteer for guard duty at
night not so they can help protect us from outsiders but so they can
boff each other in privacy.  I just cannot get these people to take
security seriously.  They're too caught up in the who is fucking whom
game."

"I take it that the woman to man ratio is somewhat of a problem?"

"It's a huge problem," he said, pulling another smoke from the pack and
sparking up.  "It's funny.  I never would have thought that I would end
up in charge of a group in which the women were all very attractive, in
their sexual prime, and outnumbered the men by a ratio of nearly six to
one, and that I would hate it.  But I'm here to tell you now, it is not
the freakin' Garden of Eden.  People were not meant to live like this.
It screws with their sensibilities and their morality.  It pushes them
over the edge."

"What do you mean?" Brett wanted to know.

"Well, the basic problem is that all of us men have latched onto a
woman who is our "official" partner, I guess you'd say.  I'm no
exception to this.  Even though my wife is less than two weeks dead,
I'm now sharing my bed with Janet, who used to be one of the
kindergarten teachers at the school.  I mean, why not, right?"

"Right," Brett wholeheartedly agreed, thinking about his own
relationship with Chrissie.

"So that's the surface of the whole thing.  All of the men have a
partner.  The problem is that that leaves more than a hundred women,
all of whom are in the prime of their lives and most of whom are
accustomed to having a male to take care of them, WITHOUT a partner.
Most of these women are also the types who have no problem undercutting
each other and backstabbing in order to get something that they want.
So here in our happy little town we constantly have attractive women on
the prowl, trying to steal a man away from one of the women who already
has one.  And we're not talking about coy flirtation or innuendo here.
They will do almost anything to achieve this goal short of actually
killing a rival.  I imagine it's only a matter of time before one of
them tries that.  And the men..." he shook his head a little.  "Well, I
don't have to tell you how men are.  Most of us up here were blue-
collar types before the comet and these are the kind of women that we
always considered to be way out of our league.  It's not very
surprising that we find it hard to resist the temptation when one of
these women basically asks us to fuck her.  They are often quite
shameless in their manner of seduction.  I myself, as moral and
monogamous as I like to think I am, have given in more than once.  You
simply can't help it."

Brett listened to all of this carefully.  "Beautiful women constantly
on the prowl?" he asked.  "I'm waiting for you to tell me that part
about how this is BAD."

Paul laughed, taking a deep drag on his cigarette.  "Sounds ideal,
doesn't it?  It's not.  Most of the men here have already switched
partners three or four times just since the comet struck and of those
that haven't, I can't think of a single one that's not stringing two or
three along on the side.  The tension that this creates among the women
is volatile.  Most of the conversation around here is about who is
making a move, who is thinking of changing partners, who is resorting
to what to get what she wants.  Every day there are at least four
physical fights about someone who either has or is perceived to have
tried to make a move.  The rumors spread around like wildfire and the
fact that you cannot judge how accurate they are only makes things
worse.  And then you have Jessica, who lives in constant fear of
someone stealing Dale from her.  She is one of the worst sources of the
rumors and prides herself on always knowing what's going on.  But at
the same time, she is always trying to push us, as a group, to kick out
any woman that is caught engaging in "adulterous activity", as she puts
it.  So far Dale, myself, and some of the other men have always managed
to keep her from actually expelling someone who gets caught fucking the
wrong person, but her point of view is starting to spread, particularly
among those who have a legitimate partner."

"What is it that they are after?" Brett asked.  "I mean, besides sex,
why is it so important that they have a man to call their own.  Don't
they realize that this is a different world now?"

"I don't think that a lot of them realize that," Paul said.  "As for
what they are after, a lot of it depends on the individual woman.  For
some, it's strictly sex that they want.  They're horny and they want to
fulfill a biological need.  They are the easiest ones to deal with and
they are the only ones that I, shall we say... transgress with, when I
do.  They just want to get fucked for the sheer enjoyment of it.
Others however, cannot seem to live without a man's identity locked up
with theirs and they are the ones who are the source of most of the
problems here.  Thanks to Jessica and a few others like her, there is
now a perception that those who are officially partnered with a man are
somehow better than those who are not.  Thus, we have the fierce and
often violent competition to secure "attached" status.  I don't mess
with the women who are out for that."

"God," Brett said, shaking his head a little.  "And I thought
relationships were complicated before."

"No shit," Paul agreed.

There was a soft knock at the door and Mitsy opened it a crack without
waiting for a reply.  She stuck her head in.  "Paul," she said, "Steve
and Laura are here.  I had them wait for you in the main office."

"Thanks Mitsy," he said, standing up.  "Do they know why they're here?"

"Well..." she started, obvious hesitant to say that they'd been filled
in on their mistake.

"Never mind," Paul sighed.  "Has Hector checked in for his perimeter
shift yet?"

"He just got here," she told him.

"Good.  I want you and Hector to keep an eye on Brett here.  I've
already got Jeff rounding up some clothes and shaving stuff for him.
Take him over to the bath and let him get himself cleaned up.  Then
find him some place to crash for the night in the building.  Brett is
to be treated as a compulsory guest, okay?"

"A what?" she asked, her brow wrinkling in confusion.

"That means you will treat him politely and tend to his needs within
reason, but don't give him a gun or let him out of your sight, okay?
He is still to be considered potentially dangerous to us."

Her eyes tracked over to Brett for a moment and she offered a nervous
giggle.  "Okay," she said.

"I'll wait here until you find Hector.  Be sure you each have a pistol
please."

"Right," she said, her head disappearing.

Once she was gone Paul looked at Brett.  "No offense taken I hope?  You
seem like you're on the up and up but, as you've pointed out yourself,
you can't be too careful."

"No offense at all," he said.  "And if nothing else, I think the chance
to bathe will make this whole trip worthwhile."

Paul gave a cynical look.  "I'm sure you'll enjoy it," he said.
"Freakin' baths are what we specialize in here."


+++++


The bathing area was located in what had once been a women's locker
room adjacent to the community center's basketball court.  A large
marble tub had been placed atop of jack stands directly above the drain
in the floor of the communal showers.  Two hoses - an inch and half
diameter fire hose and a standard garden hose - were curled neatly up
on the floor next to it, nozzles on one end, the other ends snaking up
and out of the building through a window.  A shelf had been erected
next to the tub and it was filled with towels, washcloths, bottles of
shampoo, conditioner, bubble bath, bath beads, and every other
conceivable bath option.  A hand lettered sign, printed in spiky,
feminine script, read: PLEASE, CLEAN THE TUB AFTER BATHING.  HAVE
COURTESY FOR OTHERS!  Light came from a serious of oil lamps and
candles that had been placed around the perimeter of the tub.

Brett looked at all of this in frank amazement as Mitsy and Hector, a
young Mexican man, led him into the room.  Hector was carrying an
armful of fresh clothing with him, which he set down on the towel
shelf.  Both of the guards had pistols strapped to their waists but
neither one of them seemed particularly concerned that he would try
some sort of dangerous move on them.

"Hecky," Mitsy asked her fellow guard, "can you go start the pump on
the fire engine?"

"Sure," he said in heavily accented English, "right away."  He headed
back out the door.

"The water comes from the fire engine?" Brett asked.

"The cold water does," she said.  "It'll take a minute for him to get
it going.  In the meantime, you can put the garden hose in the tub and
start putting in the hot."

"Hot water?" Brett said, shaking his head in wonder.  "Where does THAT
come from?"

"Paul rigged up a big rain barrel for us near the side of the
building," she said.  "He diverted one of the rain gutters on the roof
so that it would dump into it and keep it full for us.  We have a fire
burning under it all the time.  Ted, he was a plumber before the comet,
he rigged a faucet in the side of the barrel and we ran the hose in
from there.  It doesn't flow very fast so you probably want to get it
started right away.  It takes about ten or fifteen minutes to get your
bath at the right temperature."  She shrugged a little, as if to say
that somehow, they were coping with these primitive conditions.  "It
works."

Paul picked up the garden hose and put the end of it into the tub.

"Be sure to close the drain first," Mitsy warned.  "We try not to waste
hot water here."

"Of course," Brett said, pushing down the locking drain button.  He
then opened the nozzle on the end of the hose.  Water began to slowly
flow, at about a third the rate of a normal faucet.  It was lukewarm at
first but, by the time he heard the sound of the fire engine's motor
turn over outside, it was too hot to touch.  Steam began to rise into
the air.

"Here," Mitsy said, bringing over the fire hose.  "You can leave that
one in there and spray in the cold with this one.  It comes out pretty
fast.  Be careful not to overspray it."

"Right," Brett said, taking the heavy hose in his hands after leaving
the smaller one on the bottom.  He examined the controls of the nozzle
for a moment and then, pointing it into the tub, slowly opened it up.
Water began to spray out, slowly at first and then with considerable
force.  The tub began to rapidly fill.

"Here," Mitsy said, "let me put some soap in there for you."  She had a
bottle of Ivory dishwashing liquid in her hands.  She squirted a
generous amount into the flow of water.  White bubbles immediately
began to form.

"Thanks," Brett told her, looking over at her for a moment.  She had
taken off the rain slicker that he had first seen her in and was
dressed now in Levi's jeans and a flannel shirt.  Though her clothing
was baggy it was still easy to tell that she had a nice body beneath
it.  Her hair was dark brown and cut short.  Her face was without
makeup but was still very pretty.  He wondered what her husband had
done.  Had he been a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant?

"That's enough cold," she told him when the tub was about two-thirds of
the way full.  "Shut it off and let the hot water fill up the rest."

He did as she said, shutting down the nozzle and cutting off the flow
of water.  He set the hose back down on the floor.

"I'll have Hecky keep the pump running," she said.  "As dirty as you
are you're gonna need two tubfulls to get everything clean.  Get the
worst of the dirt off and wash your hair and then we'll drain it and
start over.  The second tub will get the rest of it off and you'll be
squeaky clean."

"Squeaky clean," he said.  "I didn't think I'd ever be squeaky clean
again."

As they waited for the hot water to heat the tub up, Mitsy sat on a
bench just outside the shower area while Brett sat on the end of the
tub.  She asked him about how he had come to be in their little town
and he explained about Chrissie and Jason and his desire for something
approaching safety.

"I can't believe you actually LIVED out there for almost two weeks,"
she said, her eyes wide.  "It must've been horrible."

"It wasn't a PTA meeting," he said.  "That's for sure.  Hopefully
you'll never have to find out just how nasty it really is."

"God forbid," she said.  She did not ask him about just WHY he was
still here and what his current status in the community was.
Apparently that rumor had already spread to her.

He asked her about her former life, just to make conversation.  She
told him that she was twenty-six years old and had been the wife of a
senior auditor for Arthur-Anderson.  Her husband had been in a
Sacramento high rise, well into his seventieth hour for that week when
the comet hit.  "I imagine his building probably collapsed around him
in the earthquake," she said, without a trace of sadness in her voice.
"It hit pretty hard down in the valley from what I understand."

"Do you have kids?" he asked.

"Two girls," she said.  "Four and six years old.  The older one was in
school, the younger one was home with me when it happened.  Luckily the
school stood up to the quake and Megan was all right.  They're both
over at one of the other women's house right now.  We kinda watch out
for each other's kids when someone has guard duty."

"I see," Brett said, putting his hand into the tub.  The water was nice
and toasty, just begging for him to enter it.  He dragged out the hot
water hose and shut down the nozzle.  "Well," he told Mitsy.  "I guess
it's time."

"I guess it is," she smiled, making no move to leave her perch on the
bench.

"Any chance of getting a little privacy?" he asked her.

"Paul told me to keep a close eye on you, didn't he?" she asked
sweetly, her eyes teasing.

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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