DISCLAIMER: Paramount/Viaborgcom (aka Ba'al) owns all. Hail be to Ba'al. Ba'al is mighty. Ba'al is greedy. Ba'al is one of the owners of Congress and the Grand Cayman Islands. I am not mighty. I am not rich. No money is involved in this fiction, and forgiveness is begged from Ba'al. This story mine under International Berne Copyight Law. 2,600 words, February, 2005.
SEQUEL/SERIES: This is the final story in the 'Rooftop' series and follows Rooftop: prelude, Rooftop Evening and Rooftop Night.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Rooftop Morning
By R.Schultz
The bed is where it is for a reason. In the morning the sun can shine on it.
For decades I lived in the universe of the Center.
Darkness, a world of vague shadows, a world of lies. Now I can do this, what I'm doing now. Standing, wanting a cigarette, and remembering last night. Admiring the dust motes dancing vaguely in the quiet air and enjoying the sight of skin and slight body hair glistening in the glow.
At other times I'm sure Bree appears to be smooth skinned and quite hairless. It's all a lie, when the truthful sun of morning bathes her. She is covered with Peach fuzz; glorious touchable velvety peach fuzz. Physically she is the joke about the woman you want to lick all over.
Mentally? She's not as other women, I know this even if I've only known her one night. She's a watch spring wound too tight. A caged tiger, or perhaps Satan locked in a monastery cell. Wanting out. Only this creature doesn't seem to be aware yet that she wants out. Or maybe she does.
She's getting divorced, and she came to "The Wrinkle" bar to find another woman to love. That's a few steps towards revelation.
My gaze awakens her. She begins to move, presenting me with the enviable sight of her strong young muscles moving easily under the wrap of her pale skin. My age, yes, in truth. But I feel inside like I'm twenty years further along.
She is so beautiful. Of course there's also something incredibly hard and brittle in her, but regrettably that's to be expected. She's damaged goods, I guess, and Lord knows I feel an affinity for damaged goods. Everyone I've ever known are damaged goods. Daddy, my brother, Broots ... Jarod was just one of many. I wonder what her story is? And truth be told, I suppose I have a 'Broken In Shipping' stamp on me somewhere.
She turns and smiles up at me, her hand shading her eyes from the sun as she searches me.
"What?" I ask, almost to myself.
"You coming back to bed?" she asks.
This morning many women would be confused, or feign innocence or shock, or something. She is the straight married woman, after all. A certain amount of theatrics is to be expected. Normal woman awakening to find herself in a very strange bed, that sort of thing. In these circumstances most couldn't pass up a chance to act tremendously confused and histrionic.
Instead she not-quite innocently inquires whether we're going to make love again, which is what the query was actually about.
To her the discovery that she liked making love to a woman was something easily grasped and held. On a par with discovering she looked better in a skirt of sienna coloring than tule. Not many have a mind that strong. Or implacable?
"You've exhausted me," I lied. "I've got to rest for a little while."
She's married. Maybe the rings are what first attracted me. I can almost fall in love, but my forebrain knows she's married and I'm already half-way on the road to breaking up with her. I can't allow myself to fall in love with a married straight. Before even saying the first words to her, I'd made myself a path of retreat.
Yeah, I'm damaged goods too.
I hold out the spray of blocker oil. "Care to do my back?"
She's a little confused then, of course. These aren't her normal surroundings. Once standing, she attempts to head into the back wall; her conditioned reflexes don't remind her she's in a different bed. Then she pads around and takes the can.
We exit onto the roof. The sliding glass doors open at a touch, and we enter my world of the sun.
I have what is termed a sun porch to my bedroom. A roof over part of my old house, that which has been turned into my rooftop sun-worshipper's shrine.
Bree – I remember her name, of course – liberally coats my body from neck to heels. There is a low lattice privacy fence around my little square of roof, allowing me to tan and crisp au naturel. If the neighbors get an occasional view of female breasts, I hope they enjoy. I may be forty, but I'm still in incredible shape. Within the rooftop's confines are a pair of loungers, and my beach towels over old clean exercise pads. Instant nude beach.
A perfect lady, Bree restricts herself to admiring the oil-covered body without touching. "Care to join me?" I ask. More than hoping she'd say yes. One night isn't enough in which to get all one can out of a prize like Bree.
"I'd probably burn," she states.
Okay, redheads. I can see that. "Anything I can do for you, Bree?"
"No, I'm fine," she said. "Do you mind if I cook us some breakfast?"
"If you can find any food down there to eat," I say. "I'm a take-out sort of a gal. There's a list of places that deliver on the icebox."
She quirks her head at me, commenting; "Most people say fridge. Only old people say icebox."
"Where I come from I guess I heard icebox."
"And that would be?"
"Somewhere far, far away, and long, long ago."
Bree pats my nearest buttcheek and disappears back into my house. I am feeling remarkably safe and content. Bree has adapted herself to being bi or gay without pause. Most women treat taking another woman to bed as a monumental event, a universe shaker.
This one is different. She knows now she likes females as lovers, and it isn't going to stop with me. Big deal. End of discussion. Bree is also an Alpha Mother Dominant, and she'll take good care of me. I'd bet she can tune my car, also.
I relax face down, knowing intellectually all this tanning is bad for me, but not giving a damn. I've given up cigarettes, therefore I'm allowed a few things that are bad for my health. Suddenly the warm sun, almost no perceptible breeze, and a feeling of immense satisfaction plunges me down Morpheus slope.
I awaken to aromas and tastes being anticipated. I'd been asleep for an hour or so, according to the sun.
There is enough of a tease to Bree that she is awakening me by holding a hot morsel of something under my nose. I awaken to smiling woman and a fork being dangled near my mouth.
"Open wide," she demands. I do, and the first bite is quickly being savored. Omelet. Veggies. Then a sliver of crisp chicken.
"You had a single non-spoiled container of Chinese stir fried chicken in your cooler, and a few eggs. I've made you a breakfast from it."
Delicious.
"You also had some Bisquick and margarine. You really should get some butter." She has added a pair of drop biscuits to the breakfast mix on the plate, and now forks them open to receive dabs of yellow margarine.
She is feeding me bite by bite in what amounts to bed. Talk about Alpha woman. I feel incredibly pampered, which I suppose is the point.
Well, this won't be the first time I've wound up as the Bottom.
When Bree 'accidentally' allows a few drops of Tropicana to spill into my belly button, it's expected. She bends to lick up the juice and one thing leads to another. No hesitancy in this woman. She's a woman who LIKES making love to other women, and she's committed herself body and soul to doing it well and enjoying herself in the process.
She's very good. No qualifiers like 'for a beginner'.
Then it's her turn on the beach towel. However, she grabs my hand and we go inside to enjoy my bed. Any remaining thoughts of 'safe sex' disappear as that immaculately trimmed 'landing strip' of hers again quivers underneath my touch and kisses.
We towel each other off after our shower, both of us knowing it's time for her to return to her home. She'd used my cell phone before the shower, and her side of the conversation had been spirited.
We're of a size, so she has the luxury of enjoying clean clothes. She wears a clean set of my undies and is adjusting the bra strap as I kiss her shoulders.
"Why don't you like to be called by your first name?" she asked.
"Family history," I evaded. The Devil in me rises up.
"Let me explain in a riddle," I return. Bree perks up.
"I have, or rather had, sisters three and a Mother one. But now I have no Mother and sisters four. What am I?"
"Well, I know the first group of sisters," she smiles. "They absolutely have to be named Patience, Faith and Hope. And then there's you. The Mother part I fail to understand unless ...."
Something dark obscures her sun. "Incest?" she whispers.
"No," I quickly explain. "Something far worse, in its own way."
"What is it?" she asks. I'm sorry now I posed the riddle. I wish I'd never begun this line of thought.
"Maybe I'll tell you some day," I managed back. How can I use words like cloning when everyone knows we're still decades from doing that with humans? I know I still love my dear martyred Mother as my Mother. After all, you usually just get the one. The suspicion that she might also be my sister means nothing to me inside.
Bree stops me before I continue dressing.
"Bullet wounds I know," she murmurs, fingering one of the ones on my chest. Is that a trace of concern in her relentless voice?
"There are eight of them by my count," she continued. "And three stab wounds, and you've never had your collar bone set right."
Her eyes are bright, and not entirely with wonderment.
"What are you? Who are you? What do you do?"
"I'm your lover," I answered. She recognized my attempt to make this conversation end, but was determined.
"The long wound on your hip?"
"An accident," I said.
"It looks like someone hit you with a sword."
"Like I said, an accident. I never should have let him get that close to me with a machete."
She held me very tight and very close for the longest time. No words; just the hug. She might be damaged goods, but she wasn't broken. Much of her was still right.
No more questions.
Between caresses we dressed, and I carefully slid my Beretta automatic into the holster of my back, and the snub Astra revolver into my ankle back-up position. I left the Army .45 under my mat out on the sunroof, where it had been before.
Bree caressed my automatic through my dark gray coat before she kissed me again.
Funny girl.
We went to exit out my sun porch out back, as my SUV was parked out back. I could see its black beauty and anticipate the hot seats inside. Coming down the back steps was when Sam and the other three ambushed me.
It was a perfect trap. Two to my rear and sides and two to the sides front, each with their revolvers and automatics already in their hands.
"Hands to the top of your head, Miss Parker," Sam said. One kept me covered from the rear while another flicked my coat up and extracted my Beretta.
Bree took that moment to begin fraying.
"Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod," she screeched, her hands fluttering to her ears. I hadn't expected her to panic like that.
"What's happening? Are you going to hurt me???" she cried out at Sam. "You won't hurt me, will you? I hardly know this woman," she cried, in between sobs.
She babbled on, slowly sliding down my body, her hands frantic on me.
"The Center wants to talk to you, Miss Parker," Sam said.
"I'm through talking to the Center," I returned. "We parted ways years ago, and you know it."
"The way I understand it, they have a whole lot of questions to ask you, and by now they be in no more mood to delay any more."
Me and big gentle black Sam were once close; lovers even. But that was long, long ago, and far, far away. He chose to stay with the Center.
"What sort of questions?" I tease Sam.
"Thirty-five million dollars went missing, for one thing," he smiled.
"Really?" I asked, my mouth open in surprise. "Jarod must have it. Ask him where it is, not me. I always had to use Broots when I wanted anything done on a Computer, you know that."
"And how did you know it was done with a Computer if you weren't a party to it?" he pointed out.
Oops.
The handcuffs were out now.
By then Bree had crumpled onto the ground, her hands around my feet. She then got my revolver out of my ankle holster.
If she had pointed the pistol barrel upwards, towards their faces or chests, they might have reacted faster and with more deadly force. After all, their weapons were already out and in their hands.
Instead they just stood there amazed as she quickly shot each one in the foot.
I retrieved my automatic and shot each in their other foot as I kicked the pistols out of their hands.
Bree was already getting in the passenger's side as I slammed behind the steering wheel.
As I peeled down the street, I spared a second to look Bree over. She had a big cream-lapping grin all over her face, and she was holding my other hand quite hard enough to hurt.
We stopped, and I opened the glove compartment. I slid the panel aside and tapped the button a half dozen times, just to be safe.
Then we turned at the next cross street, went over two blocks, and doubled back towards my house.
"I believe that I've discovered I have a positive knack for shooting men in the foot," she said out of a clear blue sky. Then she almost killed the both of us as she kissed me.
Her eyes were drawn to my house as we passed it two streets over. It was noisily burning already.
She smiled at me and asked: "What did you use?"
"Thermite. Six of them," I explained.
A half hour later I dropped her off in the parking lot of a restaurant.
The last of her I saw was in the rear view mirror. She wasted no time watching me leave. She was aimed at the entrance, a phone, and a taxi to take her away. Two more taxis later she'd go home. Both guns were in the river, and I was on my way to pick up my second car, out of storage.
I wondered if I'd ever see Bree Van De Kamp again.
The End