My phone rang abrasively, dragging me out of a dead sleep. I fumbled around the headboard and found the receiver.
"Somebody better be dying," I grumbled.
"Uh, oh. Something more learned. You not only hump my best friend, you're grouchy in the morning as well. Oh, the things I'm putting down in my little book." A cheerful voice I recognized brought me to slightly more wakefulness.
"Karen? What are you doing babbling at me at this time of day?"
"I wanted to know if you were interested in going to breakfast. I can tell I shouldn't have called, though."
I peered groggily at my clock. "Are you totally demented? It's 5:30 on Sunday morning. I don't even have my oxygen tank turned on at this time of day."
"Can't help it, I'm a morning person. I always go to breakfast early on Sunday. You want to go or not?"
"How the hell should I know? Where? And when? Give me something to grasp here."
"Just you and me. I usually go with Jean but she's pleading physical and emotional inability. Seems the other night she got half crippled screwing her brains out someplace. And also had a raging argument with her sister that's still going on. She isn't coming along today."
"Oh. Maybe it isn't safe for me to leave the house either."
"Ah hell, I should have predicted something like that might happen. She's been hornier than a three-cunted mink, and I know a man's dick doesn't have any conscience. I promise not to dismember you."
"I suppose I can take a couple of adrenaline pills, if I have any left. Where do you want me, and when?"
"How about if I pick you up? Half an hour?"
"Make it 45 minutes. I need to stand in the shower and get awake."
I was waiting by the front door when she pulled into my driveway. We were on our way immediately. The first thing I noticed was that she got onto the freeway. "Where the hell we going for this breakfast, Dallas?" I grumbled.
"Don't be silly. Dallas is a thousand miles from here. You really are a morning crab. No, Windsor Hills."
"Sixty miles? They better have some damn fine eggs."
"They do, actually. Little Mom and Pop type place with great food. More important, our cottage is on a lake about five miles from there. We can go out in the boat if you want, fish, loaf around all day, do whatever." That brightened things up. I like spending time around the water.
I discovered the lady has a heavy foot. In less than an hour we were settled in a booth in an old-fashioned family café that probably hadn't changed much in fifty years. The breakfast was great, fluffy scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, in quantities that would make an interstate trucker blink.
The cottage was tucked under monstrous pine and birch trees at the end of a tiny dirt road. I could smell the lake before we got there, a clean, uplifting scent that always makes me feel as though the worst a day could inflict can be dealt with somehow.
We opened the cabin windows to let the place air out and walked down to the dock. The water was beautiful deep blue, smooth as glass. A nice little runabout covered with a tarp rested on a hoist. "You water ski?" she asked me.
"No, not at all. I can drive if you want to, though."
"Maybe later. First things first for me. I want to peel down. Whenever I'm here I like to be as near naked as possible."
"Sounds luscious to me. I'm all for that. But I didn't bring any swim trunks or anything."
"Naughty boy. Lots of swimming pants around. We keep them for unexpected visitors. There should be four or five pairs on the shelf above the clothes dryer."
I found a pair of faded trunks and an old golf shirt and put them on. It was easily warm enough to go barefoot. While I tried to find something on the battered old radio I heard her come up behind me.
A pair of slender arms slid under mine and grasped me around the chest. Through my borrowed shirt I could feel a pair of firm and obviously naked breasts pressed against my back. I reached around and felt smooth skin, no matter where I touched.
"I told you I like to peel down when I'm up here," she said. "Why do you have all those horrid clothes on?"
"All? A pair of trunks and a shirt?"
"More than I'm wearing, pal. Come around here."
I turned within the circle of her arms and pulled her nude body against me. "You weren't kidding were you? The neighbors must have a lot of drownings when you go water skiing."
"Don't be an oaf. I cover up a bit when I go outside. But we aren't outside. And I haven't been laid in a couple of weeks. You didn't really think I brought you all the way up here to go fooling around with stinky old fish, did you?"
"Yes, I did. Silly me. I suppose this means the bass get to live a little longer?"
"For a while at least. You gonna start something active here, or do I have to do it all myself?"