Chapter 7

When Catalina and Bonnie got back from grocery shopping, it was getting along in the afternoon, and the sun was close to going down. At this time of year, that meant it was still a little early to think about dinner, and Roger commented about it.

"Not a problem," Bonnie told him. "We can go out and soak in the hot tub for a while, come in and have dinner, and then soak some more afterwards."

"Sounds like a plan," Catalina agreed.

"Let me go see if it's warmed up enough," Roger suggested, and headed for the door. Actually, he was sure it was since he'd checked while the women were gone, but he went outside to work up his courage a little as well as peel back the cover and take the temperature. The moment he had been dreading ever since it had worked out that Bonnie was going to join them was at hand.

As far as Roger knew the two women hadn't brought swimsuits with them, which meant they were going to be heading for the hot tub bare-assed. That was not a surprise, since he knew Catalina had been a part-time nudist, and he seemed to recall her mentioning her mother had been, too. That much Roger was sure he could handle -- being in a hot tub with two good-looking nude women, even if one of them was notably older than he was. But he was also dead sure he was going to catch hell if he wasn't in the tub bare-assed with them. If it was just he and Catalina, there was no obvious problem -- they were used to being nude with each other and frequently were. The two of them nude in the hot tub would be agreeably romantic and almost certainly would lead to steamy sex, which was roughly what Roger had in mind when he suggested it to Catalina on the way north in the first place. But adding Bonnie to the mix most likely took away the prospect for the hot, steamy sex and replaced it with an awkward embarrassment.

Oh, suck it up Roger, he thought. We're all adults and they're used to it. What happens happens. Deal with it.

"One-oh-one," he announced as soon as he was inside the door. That announcement was all it took to have both Catalina and Bonnie stripping off their clothes like they were filled with ants. In only seconds they were bare, except for towels raided from the bathroom -- and they were carrying those. Roger noted Bonnie had a pretty good body for a woman her age, not a lot of sagging for having a pretty nice chest. She had dark areola and big nipples like her daughter, and, like her daughter, her pubic hair had been shaved clean.

"Come on, Roger," Catalina urged. "Don't let yourself be left with what the last little piggy got."

"Hell," he snorted as he unbuckled his belt. "I didn't realize you were in that big a hurry."

Sure enough, the women were out the door before he got even halfway undressed, and by the time he made it out to the tub they were already neck deep with the bubbler going.

Actually, being nude in the hot tub wasn't all that new to Roger. He and Colleen had bought the tub maybe ten years before, with the idea in mind of heading out there nude and maybe doing a little fooling around when in it, or at least warming them up for some fooling around. That was why there were screens on either side of the porch to block the view from the neighbors on each side -- the view out the back was a brushy hillside, so Roger had figured he really didn't need a visual barrier there. He and Colleen had used the tub frequently in the first couple years -- always nude, of course -- and fading off to a few times a year after that. For the first three years after Colleen died, Roger had filled the tub each year and had only used it a handful of times, mostly when something at the plant caused his back to ache. Soaking for a while in the tub and letting the bubbler massage his back did him a world of good.

When he drained it the third year after Colleen's death, he realized he'd only used it twice that year, which wasn't enough use to justify keeping the water warm, so the last couple years he just hadn't bothered to fill it when the hard freeze season was over. It only took sitting his butt up on the deck, swinging around to get his legs in the water, and slipping into it to remind him just how good it felt.

"That wasn't as bad as you thought it would be, was it?" Bonnie laughed. "Catalina tells me that your skills lie in areas where nudity is useful," she smirked. "Maybe I can find out some time, if Catalina will let us. I think she's being rather selfish, don't you?"

"Catalina," Roger said, eyes narrowing. "You tell your mother everything, don't you?"

"Pretty much," the younger woman laughed. "But then, she pretty much tells me everything, too, and her stories are almost always better than mine."

"I'm not sure I want to find out how true that is," Roger replied in pure exasperation. He sank down in the tub, if for no more reason than to gather his wits. Once he'd steeled himself to get in the hot tub nude with the two it wasn't so bad, but he knew the teasing could get out of hand in a hurry. He was beginning to realize Catalina had been more than right in describing her mother.

"Oh, it's true," Catalina giggled, and turned to her mother. "So, we haven't had enough time to catch up, what with all this Delmer shit. Did you go to ComicCon in Chicago last month?"

"Oh, yes," Bonnie replied placidly. "I wouldn't miss it. It's always a lot of fun."

"Did you do Lum again?"

"Oh, my no," Bonnie shook her head. "It took me weeks to get that green dye out of my hair the last time I did it. I'll never do that again. Last Christmas I could have worn red earrings and done cosplay as a Christmas tree."

"All right," Roger sighed, "You've lost me already."

"You get a lot of weird people running around a ComicCon," Catalina explained. "Most of them costumed as a favorite character, that's called cosplay."

"Yeah, I've heard a little about that kind of thing," Roger said. "I always figured you had to be under the legal drinking age, though."

"Oh, my, no," Bonnie grinned. "It's fun for all ages. I had a ball."

"I'll bet you had a ball, in more ways than one," Catalina snorted. "Roger, you have to imagine Mom running around a bunch of comic freaks wearing nothing but green hair, a tiger-stripe thong bikini and tiger-stripe spike-heeled go-go boots."

"And the yellow horns, don't forget those," Bonnie prompted.

"Oh, yes, we won't forget the yellow horns," Catalina shook her head.

Roger stole a look at Bonnie, who had a huge grin on her face. She was a good-looking woman for whatever her age had to be, which had to be at a minimum within striking distance of sixty, and likely on the far side. Still, he'd now seen her in the nude enough to know she didn't exactly have the body of an eighteen-year-old, either. Even at her age, she wouldn't look out of place on a beach somewhere in a bikini -- but at an inside convention in Chicago in November? That had to be pushing it a little ... well, more than just a little...

Realizing both Catalina and Bonnie were trolling for a rise out of him, he decided the best thing to do was to play as dumb about this as he really was. "I never heard of a comic character named Lum. I seem to recall there was a radio show by the name of Lum and Abner back in the thirties, but I don't know anything about it."

"Oh, no," Bonnie smiled. "Lum is a popular anime character. Boys just go wild over her."

"Anime? What's that?"

"Japanese cartoons," Catalina explained. "I saw a lot of them on TV when I was in Japan. I picked up a little Japanese, not really enough to be fluent with it, but I learned a lot from watching anime. I didn't really figure out what was happening in some of them until I saw them later dubbed into English, or subtitled."

"They're a lot better than Bugs Bunny or Road Runner," Bonnie explained. Among other things, more sex."

"Much more sex," Catalina laughed. "Especially the ones you see in Japan. The ones that get over here are a little more, well, reserved. Still, there's a subculture that really gets off on them."

"News to me," Roger shook his head. "I think the last Japanese film I watched was Godzilla some night when I couldn't get to sleep, and that was years ago."

"So, Mom," Catalina smiled, still obviously sticking the needle in Roger, "If you didn't do Lum at the ComicCon this year, what did you do?"

"When I did Lum last year it was a little drafty in the hall, and I caught a cold." Bonnie smiled. "So this year I figured I'd be a little more conservative. I just did your basic anime Japanese schoolgirl."

"That's right, a little more conservative," Catalina replied sarcastically. "Roger, I haven't seen a photo of this costume, but I can imagine it. Get the image in your mind of, oh, a twelve- or thirteen-year-old Japanese girl, just starting to get boobs but doesn't really know yet what they're good for. She's wearing a schoolgirl uniform that's made up of a starched white pinafore, a pleated navy blue skirt short enough to almost but not quite reveal the crack of her ass if she stands up very straight, and long, woolen stockings loose enough that they're all puddled around her Mary Janes. Now imagine Mom in that outfit."

"I didn't wear wool," Bonnie protested. "It's itchy. Mine were a synthetic blend."

"But I hit the description pretty well, didn't I? Even at your age, I'll bet you had the pedophiles crawling out of the woodwork, tongues hanging out."

"Well, of course I had a little interest," Bonnie smirked. "Everybody around Amherst is so dull, I have to do something sometimes to get my blood pumping a little."

"And everybody else's," Catalina snorted.

"Well, hey, it's fun to do costumes once in a while. Halloween only comes once a year, and it isn't often enough."

"The last time Halloween fell on a football Friday," Catalina explained, "She went to the game in a cheerleader's outfit, right out of the sixties."

"It was not," Bonnie said. "They were much too conservative. It was more like the seventies. They were much more sprightly."