Chapter 5

Penny hesitated a moment before she pressed the translucent button beside the door. Somewhere behind the door in the distance she heard the telltale "ding-dong" of a doorbell chime. Muffled footsteps sounded in the distance, growing louder as the summoned person making them grew closer. There was a moment of silence and then the door opened. On the other side, however, was a man.

"Hi," Penny said somewhat surprised. "Do I have the wrong apartment? I'm looking for Jenn?" The man nodded then smiled.

"She's in the shower," he said. "I'm Tim, her husband." His hand jutted out in greeting and she shook it, feeling the strong masculine grip. "She told me to expect you," He continued. "She should be out any minute now. Why don't you come in and wait?"

Penny hesitated for a split second, lost in daydream as she reminisced over watching the man before her pound his hard cock into the object of her recent wet dreams with wanton abandon. Yeah I'll take some of that...

"Oh," she said, shaken from her trance by a concerned look from Tim. "Yes, of course. That's fine."

Tim looked her up and down, somewhat in the way that a dog surveys a steak that's about to be dinner, then smiled slightly and gestured for her to enter. She stepped inside the apartment and followed Tim down the hallway toward what was presumably a living room. Tim gestured for her to sit and then sat down in a chair a comfortable distance away. Not close enough to be intimate, she noted, but not so far that conversing was difficult.

"So Jenn tells me she's helping you set up garden beds," he began.

Penny nodded. "I haven't had much luck with what dirt I have in my backyard. It's pretty much clay from what I can tell."

"Well there are ways around that," Tim Began. "But the best thing that can be done around here, provided that it doesn't screw up your landscaping too much is to build hügelkultur beds. They pretty much self-water and they keep the minerals and fertilizer that you add available and don't wash away. They're pretty amazing really."

"She showed me your garden back in the woods," Penny replied. "I'm sold on what I've seen so far."

"Ah the guerilla garden," Tim chuckled. "Technically that's illegally squatting, but it's not like we can set up any kind of garden here in the apartment complex without getting evicted." He sighed and a sad smile crossed his face. "We used to have a house and about four acres and an absolutely huge garden."

"This economy is hard on all of us that's for sure," Penny agreed, reading between the lines. "I used to be a business consultant. Now I'm just a housewife trying to scrimp and save and squeeze the life out of every penny."

Tim nodded thoughtfully.

Before the conversation could continue Jenn appeared from a door that they had passed as they entered. For Penny, time seemed to stop, or at very least slow down. Tim had mentioned that Jenn was showering, but Penny hadn't expected her to come straight from there without drying off completely.

The small blue towel was wrapped in a bun, corralling the crimson mess of hair atop her head. The larger towel was yellow, and was wrapped around Jenn's midsection from mid-thigh to across her ample chest. Penny's eyes zoomed in on the woman's chest and she had to blink a few times to regain her composure so that her hosts wouldn't catch her leering. A glance between Jenn and Tim went unnoticed by Penny as she forcibly brought her eyes up to face Jenn directly.

"I see you found the place," Jenn said, smiling warmly. "Sorry it's not much."

"Oh no," Penny said getting to her feet. "It's very nice. I like your furniture."

Jenn frowned thoughtfully. "It's not our old country house, but it's what we can afford right now."

Jenn say down in a chain opposite Tim and tucked her feet beneath her. Her towel loosened a bit at the top and slipped down a fraction of an inch. She wiggled in her seat and finally settled with her legs turned away from Penny. Wouldn't I love to be tangled up in those, she thought. Jenn smiled slightly, but said nothing.

"So I take it you're out of work like we are," Jenn said. Penny nodded. "At least you were able to keep your house. I so miss my garden from the country house." She shook her head sadly before continuing.

"When things started getting rough I did just what you seem to be doing. I hand made everything, cooked at home, bought in bulk and so on." She paused for effect. "And I started gardening."

"Much like you I had no idea what I was doing outside a book and vague memories from a summer spent with my maternal grandmother as a child. I had no clue what I was doing."

"We were still pretty well off at the time, just beginning to tighten our belts and I rented a roto-tiller and chopped up almost a quarter acre. Well, naturally it did pretty much what you have in your yard and was a chunky, cloddy mess with no real chance of growing anything but weeds."

"So I was at the garden center looking at fertilizer and this old man with a pony tail starts talking to me. At first I was thinking he was crazy or a little slow in the brain due to all the hemp he had likely smoked. I mean he was a real hippy. The 60's were way kind to him I am sure."