Summer arrived with a bang. On Mother’s Day, it had been cool, even for us. By Father’s Day, we disparaged ever seeing the sun, much less breaking eighty degrees. Cold and rainy was how the weather forecasters kept calling it. By Independence Day, we were begging for those cool temperatures again. There is something to be said for a week where the low was those eighty degree days we had been begging for. And that was before nine in the morning. If it was unbearable at lunch time, you felt like you were walking on the surface of the sun by dinner.

I had gone to visit a client, and when I came out of their meat locker-level air conditioning, the oppressive heat felt good. I wondered, briefly, if this was what a roast felt like just before the oven door closed. I had taken public transit to the meeting and pondered the walk to the nearest subway station, balanced against calling a taxi. In the end, I went around the corner to a local bar and found myself a spot at the rail. They had plenty of tables outside, typically full, but not a single one occupied today. Inside the air conditioning labored to keep the temperatures tolerable.

“What’ll ye have?” the gal behind the bar asked, her accent hard to place.

I glanced at the taps.

“Let me have the Throttled Dick IPA.”

“Brave man,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t know. No one has offered to throttle my dick lately, or even look at it crossly.”

“You need to get out more,” she said putting the beer in front of me.

“At the very least,” I said toasting her.

She moved down the bar to help the next guy, and I fished my phone out and checked my messages. No emails and the Slack channels were quiet. It might be a relaxing night.

The bar was lightly occupied. That could be a function of the heat outside, and it was a hot time of year or the day of the week. They had a couple of televisions on with the talking heads of the day nattering on about why the President might have said this or done that. If they could justify it to themselves, more power to them, but most of us were just shaking our head and wondering if early onset Alzheimer’s was now a requirement for higher office.

“Is this seat taken?”

“No, please.”

She was medium height and medium build and dressed in the government standard of a tasteful if short hemmed dress and sneakers. A large over shoulder bag went to the ground at her feet. Two things stood out at first glance. Her brilliant blue eyes, and the larger than usual gap in the front of her dress where a button had let go.

“As lovely as your lingerie appears to be, you may not want to flaunt everything quite so soon. We have only just met,” I said with a smile.

She looked at me a bit confused, and I looked down at the swell of her breast, gently cupped in royal blue lace. Her eyes followed, and her head bent until she saw what I was seeing.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I want to give Gail a thrill.”

She indicated the bartender, coming up towards us.

“Works for me,” I said.

“Hey, Kat, what’ll you have?”

“What’s he having?” she asked as her head bobbed in my direction.

“The Throttled Dick.”

“Oh, I haven’t had a Throttled Dick in a long time. What’s it like?”

“Smooth initially, and a bit salty, but not very refreshing at the end,” Gail said with a straight face.

“Oh, I don’t know. It depends on what you like. If you let it warm up a bit, it can hit just the right spots,” I threw in.

“I have to have one,” Kat said with a grin and looked at me, “and can you help me warm it up properly?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

Gail broke up laughing and pulled the beer and another one for me before she went off to help another customer.

“Here’s to a properly warmed Throttled Dick,” she said.

“Just hold it like that, and I am sure you will have it warmed in no time,” I said as I touched her glass.

We sipped our beer, and she put hers on the bar.

“I don’t find it salty,” she said licking her lips.

“I think that comes later, after the initial taste. I’m Vic by the way.”

“Kathryn, although most people call me Kat. Are you somebody’s speech writer? You are good with words.”

“Graphic artist and sometimes writer. Thanks. You are not so bad yourself.”

We took a drink and measured each other with our eyes. I liked what I saw. Her curves suited her. Her breasts were likely a C if the bra I could just see was not playing games with them. Her hips flared nicely, and her calves were appropriately muscular. She might have been twenty-two or thirty-two, but her hands had me leaning toward the older, rather than the younger end of the scale.

“And?” she asked a gleam of humor in her eye.

“And? I was just wondering who invented the double cup bra and can we take said individual to the woodshed? It was a stray thought. I have them often. My mind goes off on these odd tangents. I could be looking at an excellent painting and wonder if the tree that became the frame gained any notoriety among his fellow trees for the honor. That sort of thing.”

I paused and took a sip of my beer.

“My roommate, Rachel, asked a similar question the other day,” she said fiddling with her phone before she handed it to me.

The woman in the picture must have been Rachel, and she had what could only have been described as a robust rack. Her hands were supporting them, hard nipples poking between her fingers as if making a point. On a larger frame, they might not have been as impressive, but Rachel was almost a pixie. She posed in three-quarters view, which only highlighted the slim nature of her body and the full spectrum of her tits. And they were pierced. As was her navel, at least. I handed the phone back and took a healthy swallow of my beer to calm my rapidly beating heart.

“That could certainly lead to a throttled dick,” I said

Kat laughed.

“Oh, you are fun. Rach would like you.”

“She likes her dick throttled does she?”

“She likes it in all forms. Throttled, stuffed, packed, protruding, and powered. As long as she is calling the shots.”

“A dominant woman, then.”

“I think it comes with the tits,” Kat said in a stage whisper and a wink.

“I think anything would go with tits like that,” I agreed.

“Ooh, yes. That too.”

Gail refilled our beers. Kat had been resting a hand on my thigh, and I could feel her nails against the inside of my leg as she gently moved them back and forth. She knew exactly what she was doing.

“So do you pick them out and gift wrap them, and she gets to expose them? Or is it a team effort?”

She giggled.

“Rachel has no problems in that area, but occasionally we will collude with each other. And if neither is lucky, well, we have each other. And batteries are cheap.”

“So I understand. I use rechargeables myself.”

“A man who cares about the environment. A good quality. Would you watch my bag?”

“Sure. There isn’t a bomb in there or a severed hand?”

“No, just a vibrator,” she said as she hopped down and walked towards the ladies room.

I just shook my head and sipped my beer. She was fun, no doubt about it. I wondered how often she whipped out that picture of her roommate. It was a good picture, and Rachel did look cute. I suspected she had some serious back problems though, hauling around what was likely a quarter of her body weight above her center of gravity.

My musing was cut off with Kat’s return. She slipped onto her seat and drank some of her beer while she put her phone away.

“How do you feel about dinner?” she asked.

“I am partial to eating it on a semi-regular basis, but I am not overly strict on how that translates. If dinner is at two in the morning, then that is when I will eat it.”

“Can’t you answer any question directly?”

“Yes.”

“Silly me.”

I noticed that she had done up the wayward button.

“Where would you like to go to dinner? I mean if that wandering question was an invitation to join you for dinner?” I asked as I finished my drink.

“Ever been to Hamilton’s?”

“Over on Fourteenth Street? Used to be a massive bookstore? Once or twice.”

“Gail, cash us out?” she said with enthusiasm

I pulled my bill from the cup in front of me and put down the money. We waited for Gail to run Kat’s card before we walked back out into the oppressive heat. The walk was as hard and grueling as any workout I had done lately. The weather seemed to sap any energy you had. Our conversation lagged as we focused on putting one foot in front of the other and not stumbling. While it appeared to be a long walk, and I was certainly aware of sweat between my shoulders and neck, we were soon in the cool confines of the entryway of the restaurant. Rather than stop at the host’s stand, Kat continued into the depths of the main floor and quickly we were standing before a banquet, already occupied by a tastefully dressed Rachel. And she had a bottle of wine in front of her.

“You made it!” she said sliding out.

Her voice was high and bright as she stood on tip toe to kiss Kat quickly on the lips.

“And you brought dessert,” she said.

She grabbed my arms for support. I had to bend down to meet her lips. The kiss was not quick, but it was not overly passionate either. She let me go and slid in and patted the seat next to her for Kat. I slid in on the opposite side of the table.

“Vic, this is Rachel. Rach, this is my new friend Vic.”

“We’ve met,” I said with a smile.

“So she tells me,” Rachel said with a smile. “Wine?”

“Please.”

She filled our glasses, and the server popped up to tell us the evening’s specials.

“So she’s been flashing that horrible picture around again?” Rachel asked.

“We were discussing bras,” Kat said.

“We were considering your wardrobe malfunction, Kit. It isn’t a horrible picture. It is quite tasteful, other than you sticking your tongue out,” I said sagely.

“I am not sticking my tongue out,” she said pulling out her phone.

I just shrugged my shoulders and drank my wine and waited.

“OK, so I am sticking my tongue out,” she said with a laugh. “So what?”

“Nothing. You are allowed to stick your tongue out, although a part of me wonders what you did with your tongue after that picture was taken. You seemed a bit aroused.”

“And you could tell that how?” Kat asked.

“Look at her legs.”

The fumbled again with Rachel’s phone and made gestures on the screen. They twisted and swished the screen. They squinted and looked.

“I can’t see it,” Rachel finally said.

“It is subtle, I have to admit, but I make my living looking at photos, so I tend to see things before others. May I?”

They slid the phone over to me, and I moved the image and zoomed. It was hard to see when it was zoomed in, but the glistening of the otherwise dull skin gave it away. I zoomed back for perspective and slid the phone back.

“How the hell... , “ Rachel said

She alternated between looking at me and the image.

“As I said, I look at pictures all day.”

How many of them have naked women in them?” Kat asked.

“More than you might imagine.”

Our server was back. She was a cute redhead, and neither of my dinner companions moved to cover their phone so I said nothing, and we ordered appetizers. I also noticed that Kat had undone her button again. Or maybe it had given up under the strain. Rachel had a silk or satin shell over her massive chest, and there was nothing to undo, but there was no minimizing her assets either. I stared unabashedly at them as we talked about the hideous weather, the better than average baseball, and the fumbles at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

“I am still surprised by how fast you saw that,” Kat said.

“I was distracted by her piercings. I might have noticed it sooner. Well, and your nipples indicated how excited you were. And the flush.”

“He is good,” Rachel said with a smile.

“And he likes Throttled Dick,” Kat said with a giggle.

Our dinner arrived, and we tucked in.

“He ordered a steak,” Rachel observed.