Mary, ready to go.
It was as if AI knew everything and everybody.
After another sensual tryst in bed, this time with Mary, I think the two women stayed up late because I heard them whispering away to each other and I heard Rich beginning to snore before I fell asleep. This was their first night chip free and they seemed to be delighting in the new experience. In the morning we had to wake them, this time by just shaking their shoulders, and they woke up, bright and cheery eyed. We had a grand adventure ahead of us and felt like any two couples would, embarking on a long vacation together.
After breakfast and coffee we packed four suitcases which nearly filled the back of our jeep. From all the bounty we’d found on East Fourteenth Street I figured we’d have no problem supplying all our needs along the way. Every town would be deserted and every store we came across an open house.
We did pack up our arsenal, the rifles and ammunition in the back and the four loaded handguns and holsters under our seats in the front. Before we left Tina and Mary said they had one quick change to make for the trip. I had to laugh as they stepped out of the bathroom together. They were both wearing Khaki shorts with lots of pockets, white tank-tops and their heavy hiking boots with matching green socks. The only glitch to their costume was that they were also wearing bracelets and rings.
“Why you two look like you’re ready for combat. All you need to do is buckle up your gun belts but that might be uncomfortable in a car seat. Mary, you look just like Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, a video game I used to play as a boy, and Tina, I swear you could be her sister. I used to have wet dreams about her. This adds a whole new dimension to our trip. Don’t you have any black leather, elbow length gloves? You two fascinate me constantly”.
“We’re preparing for our trek” Tina replied indignantly. “You men never consider all the details we think of. You just rush into things, mindlessly”.
“Only a woman would think of her attire when she’s about to come face to face with death. I hope you brought along all your cosmetics, your lipstick and fingernail polish”.
Mary caught my drift and snickered. “I see your point, my darling. But we love to dress up. It’s in our nature”.
“And I love that about you. I shouldn’t have made fun. I should have said, ‘the both of you look magnificent”.
At this moment Rich walked into the room and he did the right thing. He simply gazed at them and said “Wow”.
We set off at noon, Rich driving. On the city streets we had to go slow and swerve around stalled vehicles and debris in front of us. In some of these cars we noticed dead bodies, the ones that had crashed, and we talked about what might have caused this cataclysm. But we were clueless and this depressed us, gazing out the windows and gliding through a scene of utter desolation and not knowing how it happened.
It took us an hour to reach the Bay Bridge and another to cross the Golden Gate, there were so many obstacles in our way. By the time we reached highway One, past Sausalito, the road cleared and it as smooth sailing. We made it by dusk to Bodega Bay where we stopped by a ‘bread and breakfast’, a fine, old Victorian mansion right on the highway. There was an old woman, probably the proprietor, at the counter in the entryway, her head face down against it, dead. We walked past her and found all the rooms on the second floor vacant, elegantly furnished, four-poster beds with sashes and gray silken sheets with comforters and plush pillows.
We cooked dinner in one room from our supplies, but split up shortly after to adjoining rooms, me with Tina in hand as per our agreement. We enjoyed the most prolonged and delicious sex, this time untrammelled. I recalled from two nights before when I had to put my hand over her mouth, embarrassed that Rich and Mary might hear. But tonight we had a wall between those two and freedom reigned.
Mary was right in her conception of this arrangement, exactly as she first described it. My affection for Tina grew each day, hourly in fact, and yet my love for Mary didn’t diminish at all. If anything it also expanded with this gift she offered, this double empathy and involvement, this love times two, something I could never conceive but a woman could. I considered them both a miracle to touch. I was doubly in love.
We headed north the next morning through a dense fog, Rich insisting on driving once again and seeming extremely happy. Along the coast the fog didn’t dissipate until noon or later in some parts.
Rich mentioned in an offhand remark, “There couldn’t be any buildings like the one we were in in these parts. Solar arrays wouldn’t work. There’s not enough sunlight”.
This idea struck sparks in my mind. “Yes, and it gets worse the further north we go. The coast becomes pure fog. I remember reading that Ulysses S. Grant was posted as a captain before the Civil War to Eureka and that’s when he developed his whisky addiction. The constant fog depressed him. Maybe sunlight and electricity generation is the key to our whole dilemma. Anybody up here would be out of the picture. This would be a dark spot on the map and invulnerable”.
