Chapter 9

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright

And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city

Summer in the City – The Loving Spoonful

Summer in Austin is supposed to wonderful, almost magical even, but already there was scorching heat and we remained in an extreme drought condition. There had been a little bit of rain in the spring, enough to briefly bring the bluebonnets and other wild flowers out in bloom, but it hadn't lasted. Already the grass was starting to die as water rationing prohibited regular or lengthy lawn watering. Ranger Meadow Village and the HOA posted a joint lawn watering ban notice the day after our July 4^th party, and no one much argued about. Central Texas was in its second full year of extreme drought and the water levels in the Colorado River and the local lakes were as low as anyone could remember.

It didn't help either that the entire world seemed to be going crazier by the day. Between almost nearly daily race related riots in Florida and California, and Occupy and other anti-capitalism/anarchist political riots in San Francisco and New York, it was hard to turn on a TV and not see protesters cheering while cars and buildings (and sometimes people) burned around them.

The rest of the world, if anything, was going even crazier. Last year's upheaval in the Middle East took a bit of a breather and relaunched itself anew, Arab Summer II: Electric Boogaloo. This time the natives were even angrier, more militant, much more organized and far more fundamentalist and anti-western in attitude. Bodies strung up on light poles with meat hooks angry. The protests even managed to shake stolid Saudi Arabia and blood was starting to be shed in the streets of Riyadh and a dozen other cities. As for Iran and Israel, the shooting hadn't quite started yet but it was only a matter of time now. Iranian anti-ship missiles had already struck one Kuwaiti flagged oil tanker, burning and sinking it in the Straits of Hormuz, causing all Middle Eastern oil shipments to cease, and driving up the domestic price for gasoline over a dollar a gallon overnight.

The UN was urging everyone to stay calm, but the mood was getting ripe for another war ... if not a half-dozen more new ones. Now it was being reported Chinese troops had crossed the disputed border at Tawang into India and that war in this area had begun right where the 1962 war had ended. This heavily forested and hilly Indian border region practices Tibetan Buddhism, thus China continues to claim that it should be part of Tibet itself, and thus part of China. Problems with Pakistan were forgotten for the moment and India was mobilizing to protect its northeastern border with China. Everyone else in the world was praying that these other two nuclear armed world powers would find some sense.

With gasoline now $6 a gallon in the US Midwest, and still creeping higher nearly every day, produce, dairy and grain prices were also skyrocketing, creating levels of inflation not seen since the days of Jimmy Carter ... and with identical gas lines and rationing to match. Workers, everywhere, both white and blue collar, were demanding that someone 'do something'. The black hoodie was the uniform of the day and anarchist groups like Anonymous and Black Bloc were gaining members and street cred daily.

Buried at the back of most newspapers or netzines was a tiny little blurb from some obscure Italian astronomic observatory that was reporting that a record number of X-class solar flares had already occurred this year, and that the forecast for the remainder of the year was for an even more active season, with a likely number of record level X-class events. One unnamed researcher even so much as suggested that another 'Carrington Event' super-storm was possible, albeit unlikely. With enough real panic in the world, the vague possibility of a theoretical civilization ending didn't generate much media attention, not with half of the Middle East about to broil itself to 'very well done' steak consistency.

Despite the heat, I thought we might be doing alright ... this summer in the city.

Friday morning Jason and I were taking a walkthrough so that I could see all of the progress that had been made during the week, and in fact it appeared that the majority of the utility related work had now been completed. Enough so that it was time for me to get the water, gas and electric reconnected, so that final testing and electrical load balancing could get done. Jason also needed the last $50k check, so that he and his smaller crew could start putting the walls and flooring back together, and hinted unfortunately bluntly that a bit more money to really finish the job might be necessary. Inflation was getting to be bitch!

Ouch, that was going to be a problem.

I wouldn't say that I burned through that $115,000 auction check like a drunken sailor on shore leave, but I now realized that my impulse to install a remote controlled iron gate across the entrance to our little cul-de-sac might have been either ill-conceived or presumptuous. It had definitely cost a bit more than I'd expected but I'd ok'd the expense anyway. Now I was perhaps going to regret it.

And then there was the matter of the electricity, gas and water company deposits. Surely that wasn't going to cost all that much?

Well, getting Austin Water Utility to come out wasn't a problem. In fact they had a crew scheduled to be in our incorporated area on Monday and the nice gal at the scheduling office penciled me right in at the bottom of the work list. Easy-Squeazy.

Dealing with Austin Energy wasn't quite as easy, but the process was endurable. I had to write a fairly scary $5000 deposit check that could cover approximately six months of 'normal' electrical usage, based upon an average of DD's last year of monthly kilowatt usage. At my old house, utilities had all been in my ex's name so I'd never had an account with them before, and thus was a slightly higher risk, I guess.

As for the evil bastards at the gas company (unnamed), the less said of them the better! I wasted the better part of three days dealing with various customer service drones and their supervisors, and their bosses too, but the end result was about the same. I'd probably have had more success yelling at the clouds! In short, their records claimed that my residential address had an outstanding debt with them to the amount of nearly twelve thousand dollars, all of which pre-dated my ownership, being money that either DD or his estate had owed. Now, sensing a sucker, they wanted me to cover this old debt, or else they'd decline to provide service.

My lawyer assured me that I legally was not responsible for this prior debt ... but the gas company didn't seem to care. Their attitude was, pay it anyway or no natural gas service!

About the time I'd slammed down the phone in righteous anger the fourth or fifth time, I then remembered the two buried propane storage tanks, of two-thousand gallons each. I had to make a few phone calls and bring in Jason for a quick pow-wow but he assured me that propane was a more than adequate substitution for residential natural gas service.

Unlike electricity, natural gas and propane can be directly compared based on their individual BTU ratings, so you can do an apples-to-apples direct comparison. Propane is more expensive to buy per cubic foot, but it's also nearly twice as efficient as natural gas. Seeing that natural gas contains approximately 1,030 BTU per cubic foot and propane contains 2,490 BTU per cubic foot, we can easily derive each fuel's cost per BTU and compare their differences in price for more realistic volumes. Let's assume the cost for natural gas is $15.00 per 1,000 cubic feet. This means that $15.00 will purchase approximately 1.03 million BTU's of energy. This would be equivalent to 11.26 gallons of propane. At $2.50 per gallon of propane, natural gas would be a more cost effective energy solution, assuming I could now get it! But for right now, the price differential wouldn't kill me.

Confused yet? Yeah, so was I. Natural gas prices had dropped quite a bit earlier this year but with the madness in the Middle East lately, the prices were starting to go up again (like everything else). Propane costs were rising even faster and the longer I waited the more it was going to bite me. Filling up those two two-thousand gallon tanks was going to cost me probably more than I could really afford, but the way prices were starting to soar, I couldn't afford not to ... unless I wanted to write a twelve thousand dollar check to the gas company instead!

Roughly calculating, Jason and I figured that the thermal water heating system, with tankless heaters for backup, would save us most of the usual household natural gas costs. The gas ovens wouldn't burn up too much propane, too fast, nor would the gas clothes dryer. Filling the tanks now could give me more than enough fuel to last out the year, or maybe even two years! Do it now, we agreed, and then we wouldn't have to worry about fuel costs until next year!

Damn, writing that propane check hurt! At least it wasn't blackmail money, paying the natural gas service for something I'd never used!

That left me with only about $35k in the checkbook and this remaining auction largess evaporated to nothing when I wrote Jason another check for buying timber flooring and paneling to complete the house restoration. I was officially broke, again, but Kathy and I didn't much care. Her salary was covering our living expenses (mostly food) while at Garry's very nicely and we figured that we'd be 'ok' limping along once we could move in.

Assuming of course that it would be Kathy and not Trixie the Slut that I was living with! During most weekends now, the Slut was here to stay and neither Garry nor I knew any way to get rid of her other than by screwing her (and us) half to death. It was getting beyond exhausting and more than a little irritating.

I could count on being with Kathy Friday evenings, for awhile anyway, or at least until after our evening of target practice, but then nearly immediately afterwards Trixie would want to be picked up from a street corner on the way home. It was fun the first few times, but the regularity of this little role-playing game was getting old, even for Garry. The game of picking up little Katie after school and ravishing her was getting stale too, but psychologically Kathy was 'stuck' between these two personas at the moment. As a result, I was spending very little actual 'relationship time' with Kathy, the woman I thought was my girlfriend, and instead I was spending all my times watching and waiting for the next, always immanent mental breakdown.

Katherine, alas, was nowhere to be found these days and I was starting to wonder if I had just hallucinated the fact that Kathy might actually have a strong and vibrant personality buried somewhere under titanic depths, who might someday emerge to fight Trixie the Slut for at least minimal mental control over the woman I thought I loved. The odds weren't too terribly good at the moment.

On Saturday afternoon, the women disappeared en-masse for their pole dance aerobics class, which seemed to be going well. Every week it was clear that Kathy's skill increased, with her movements becoming smoother and stronger, and even more erotic. More than anything, I hoped that her growing skill and physical conditioning would give her some internal confidence but by Saturday the slut was nearly always in full control. Both of the Shaw's, mother and daughter were now taking beginning pole dancing lessons there as well and rumor had it that our restless widow Anne-Marie was attending as well and also getting some more personal and private lessons. Probably during those secret Tuesday night sessions at Garry's house that suddenly began occurring weekly right after the night of the shootout.

Kathy would never let us hang around and watch and would order us guys to go out to a guy flick or play golf, or find a mistress ... but leave them alone and in peace for at least two hours. We did.

We stopped at the end of the street a time or two and watched apprehensively for arriving busloads of horny studs, ordered for Trixie to gangbang, but in truth it was just exactly as advertised, a hen party, the local women plus couple of other gals who drove to pay the dance exercise group a visit. Probably more friends from their Saturday afternoon class, as I noted an especially lithe, tall and exotic Asian gal with extremely long dark hair that fell to her ass. Kathy said that she was liquid dynamite on a dance pole and far better than she was or would ever be. She claimed that Amy was improving and getting rid of the old rust even faster than she was, despite the extra Saturday night practices for us guys!

"So, when do Garry and I get our own private dance with her?" I laughed one evening as Garry and I bid the congregation of ladies good night from the driveway, shortly after our return from our usual trip to Louis' to drink beer and watch sports on the big screen TV there. From the looks of things the Tuesday night hen party attendance was up to at least ten women now, including the slightly portly Mrs. Thomas from down the street. Probably she just couldn't stand the thought of all of the other neighborhood women having fun without her involved in some way. That was fine with Kathy as she laughed that the exercise might get that tummy under control eventually, if she stuck with it, which actually seemed to be unlikely for the long term!

"Pretty soon, I think." Kathy smiled as she gave us both a hug. "Amy's been without a boyfriend for awhile now and from what the other ladies have indiscreetly told her, she knows that our sex life is rather ambitious and creative ... and unusually sharing. I swear, some nights the gals just want to talk about some nasty thing that I've admitted to doing in the past, and frankly they'd all love to meet Trixie the Slut, but I'm way too scared of what would happen if I lost control then! As for Amy, I think she feels unwanted and unloved and I think she would really like a pair of nice guys to ogle her and watch her dance, to give her some sexual confidence again. Her body is really hot, but she doesn't even believe what she sees in the gym mirrors, that she can fold herself into a pretzel and probably even bend enough to lick her own clit if she felt like it! She's really getting hot for some male attention, enough so that she was even joking again about dancing nights at some club, but she's really much too shy to go through with it and asked me if I'd dance and strip with her."

No and hell no! "Not a chance, not while you're living with me and we have anything of a relationship left. Trixie knows what the rules are ... and they've been bent already way further than I would have wanted them! I'm trying to be a nice, understanding guy, but piles of money or not, I don't want my girlfriend displaying her snatch to complete strangers ... or giving them blowjobs or handjobs in the champagne room either. If Amy wants an appreciative audience, then Garry and I will have to suffice. Clear?"

"Yeah." Her tones suggested that this was about as close to a non-agreement as she thought she could make without provoking an immediate fight. Hell, I was just in the mood for one! Kathy wouldn't quite meet my eyes either. No ... this particular matter was far from definitively closed.

"As for Amy," she quickly added to try and change the subject to something she thought I'd rather hear, "I've almost talked her into a private performance, sometime just for us. Maybe even this Tuesday night, after dance practice. She doesn't mind showing off most of her hot body in front of the gals, but we've all always kept at least a g-string and a sports bra on at all times. You need that sort of bust support to help keep your balance when you're just learning and it's not a good idea to lose the top and flaunt what you've got unless you know what you're doing and can do at least basic spins and twists without falling. I think a few of the girls would agree to perform in just pasties and tassels across the nips, but most of them aren't really good enough yet for that sort of exhibition, let alone a proper gentleman's club style performance, so stop drooling... you've got awhile still to wait before the rest are ready for the bright lights!"

Tuesday evening as usual Garry and I went to Louis' to get our own exercise and lift a few 12 ounce curls with some beer bottles. For the guys, we'd established Tuesday night as our regular neighborhood watch planning meeting. We'd given up trying to work with the Village HOA and we'd end-run that entire legality by signing up with a county-wide run watch program run by the sheriff's department. This made our little neighborhood group a smaller fish within an existing bigger organization, but they were already firmly established and even more importantly, adequately funded! The county had even bought the watch four marked patrol cars complete with mounted video cameras and radios connected directly to the dispatch office.

Our supervising officer was Deputy Mark Ingram, a big dark and looming menace of black man almost large enough to give our Lumpy a serious tussle. He also had an infectious smile and was a cheerful and gregarious as a grown man could get. He'd been a defensive end lineman at UT's football program (mostly a bench player) and nearly from the start we were plotting how we could line him up against the Lump in a modern day battle of the trenches, offensive vs defensive lineman muscle. My bet would be for the Lump, but it would be an interesting face-off!

Garry had already vaguely known Mark in some professional capacity, and from our first actual meeting we all hit it off pretty nicely together. By our third week of holding up Louis' bar counter, we were pretty much good buds. Enough so that Garry rather unthinkingly loosened his lips a little too freely and laughingly told our watch boss and friend exactly what sort of fun we had waiting for us once we got home.

Damn it.

"No shit? Your girlfriend teaches a pole dancing class at home every Tuesday night? Man ... I'd like to be a fly on that wall sometime! Hell, let me know and I'll bring along a couple of stacks of one dollar bills to tip them with!"

"Well, maybe." Was about as far as I'd commit to. I knew exactly what would happen and it would end up in more annoyance and frustration for me. I knew before it was over that Mark's black cock would end up inside of Trixie the Slut, and that was just one more slight adjustment of the virtual goalposts, another stretching of the rules to bring in another outsider, even a new friend, into our erotic play. What would be left? Pulling in strangers off of the street for Trixie to fuck? Or worse, letting her and Amy dance at some professional strip club spreading their gashes for cash?

I had to draw the line somewhere. I think Garry was slightly disappointed, but more or less agreed with my principle ... as long as it wasn't really a 'race' issue. Man ... I did not want to have that conversation, but Garry couldn't resist making a joke out of it.

"So, you draw the line right at 'big black cock' for the Slut? I don't think the gal has any taboos left in her!"

"No! She's probably already spread for everyone and any race she could. Buried in her inexhaustible cunt, every cock just becomes pink! Look, if it happens – it happens ... but I'm just getting sick and tired of sharing with everyone something that I once thought would be mine and mine alone to enjoy. I swear to God though, if I have to deal with Trixie nonstop all of this next weekend I'll be 99% ready and willing to farm her slutty ass out myself! I was amused at first, and it's nice to get fucked more in one week than my ex ever doled out in any full month, including during the honeymoon, but now it's just maddening ... and now I'm wondering if I made a mistake inviting Kathy into my life. We're now dealing with Trixie all of the time and I've hardly had three sensible sentences from Kathy all week. Fucking is fun, but it isn't a relationship and I'm getting to the point that I'd rather have some peace and quiet, but I'm not going to get any!"

Nope. Not a bloody chance!

We gave the gals their full two hours and even another half hour extra and Garry and I returned to a mostly empty house of just Kathy. Too exhausted for even a last private workout, we caught up on our shared gossip while having a late snack and we all migrated to bed without any drama or extracurricular activities, or even any private nookie. I really needed the rest anyway.

Thursday evening was supposed to be the night of the annual HOA election, and our party of opposition was there and ready to bring down the existing governing council. There was just one problem ... posted on the window of the Village meeting hall was a noticed that the elections had been 'postponed' for three months!

"Let me guess," I muttered to Garry, Kathy and my attorney, Jeff Howe, "they got together in another private quorum and decided that if they couldn't usurp the election, or even cancel it entirely, then they could at least delay the day of reckoning!"

"Got it in one!" Jeff laughed with a giggle. "Old Henricksen, the JP is absolutely going to love this. He was supposed be here tonight to watch the fun, but he thought he'd have a holdover case that would make night court run over. I've already told him that I'm preparing a massive criminal and civil case against these clowns and this little trick tonight is just going to be the frosting upon the cake!"

My old attorney friend was definitely counting his chickens before they hatched, but I had to admit while skimming his calendar of events and alleged offenses, that there were indeed quite a few eggs now waiting to be hatched. He said that he'd be filing the civil briefs with the Justice of the Peace next Monday and that he already had an appointment with the county prosecutor to present the materials for a criminal prosecution of the HOA. Tricky and usually futile to do, but our current board had been clumsier and stupider than most. If nothing else, a subpoena from them might get our hands upon the elusive financial records of the Association. Per HOA rules, they were required to release their finances annually, but as far as anyone could tell this had not been done in at least five years.