The next day was Sunday, and after the hassles of the casting call and tryouts the day before, it was good for a day of rest. By now it was getting to be the middle of May, so things had warmed up after the sometimes chilly and often dreary days of April. While the trees hadn’t fully leafed out, some of them were showing green, and the ones that weren’t were showing buds. It wouldn’t be long before the all-too-brief warmth and glory of summer would be upon them.

Brett still had the habits of a milker to a certain degree; he tended to get up earlier than Meredith and Kellye, so when he got up that morning he realized that they were likely to be in the sack for hours. For once he didn’t feel like reading plays or piddling with some of the things that needed to be done. Since he’d been at Curlew Creek he’d only been out into the immediate vicinity infrequently, usually with specific things to be finished, and he still felt a little lost. This seemed like a good opportunity to get in the van, burn a little gas exploring the countryside, and perhaps find a diner that was more appealing than Mom’s.

In the time he’d been in the area, he’d been in Coopersport and Oxford a couple of times, so he at least knew the general layout of the towns. For no more reason than the fact that he had some posters for the dinner theater in the van, he decided to go in the other direction toward Centerton, the other major town in the county and a little farther away than the other two. It was a pleasant drive through mixed wooded and farming country; he noticed a few reasonably sized dairy farms, none of them milk factories like the Gravelines ran. He could see corn sprouting, and wheat was coming along nicely to his farm-boy eye. He even noticed several patches of grapes, two or three acres in size, and wondered how much of their production went through the Curlew Creek Winery.

He did find a pretty good place to have breakfast, a friendly place not unlike Grumpy’s Diner, and the waitress on duty was about as full of shit as the one at Grumpy’s, as well. Unfortunately, the place was a little too far away to be a regular stop, but he resolved that if the chance arose he might have breakfast there again sometime. And he even stopped to put up a few posters on the way.

It was comfortably warm when he got back to the house to discover the girls spread out in the lawn chairs out in the yard, wearing bikinis and taking in the spring sun, a sight worth checking out. Meredith was wearing a black one that didn’t cover a whole lot, and Kellye had on a tie-dyed string job that covered even less, proportionately or otherwise. He sat in the van for a moment to give either or both of them the opportunity to cover up or go inside, but neither seemed to have any inclination to do so.

Deciding that he wasn’t upsetting anything, he got out of the van and walked over to the two sunbathers. “So what are the two of you up to today?” he asked.

“Just working on our tans a little,” Kellye replied. “It’s too nice a day not to.”

“I checked my e-mail when I got up,” Meredith added. “There was an e-mail from Janine Warrenton, the gal who wrote Chocolate, Roses and Sex. I’ve been reading it over, and had a couple questions about it, so I wrote her and told her we were doing it.”

“So what did she think?”

“If e-mails could scream with delight, I think that one did,” Meredith grinned. “She’s so thrilled she’s going to fly in to see it. She said that as far as she knows no one has ever done any of her plays in a public performance.”

“That ought to be fun, to see if your interpretation matches with her vision,” Brett smiled.

“Oh, yeah. I don’t think I’m going to screw it up too badly, though. But that got me to thinking. I’ve read it over several times but I really hadn’t tried to work on it, so Kellye is prompting me to see how close I am to going off the book with it.”

“She’s getting part of it from memory,” Kellye reported. “But she’s got a ways to go.”

“I learn lines pretty quickly but sometimes I have to work at it,” Meredith admitted. “And we’ve been so focused on Same Time Next Year and Marriage Proposal that I haven’t been able to get serious about it.”

“Well, don’t let me keep you from it,” he said. “We do have something under a month to get it worked up.”

“Aaaah, we were just winding up,” Meredith replied. “I’m going to read it over a couple more times, and have Kellye prompt me again, maybe later this afternoon.”

“You don’t have much more to go,” Kellye pointed out. “Why don’t we just go ahead and finish up?”

“Yeah, maybe we better,” Meredith agreed. “I think we were somewhere around, ‘Now, the thing with Paul is that he was a nice guy, but only so far …’”

Brett didn’t pay much attention to her soliloquy. He’d read the play too, but wasn’t trying to memorize it. There would have to be some work done on the presentation, but that could come when Meredith was a little more confident with her lines. He resolved to just stand back, keep his mouth shut, and let them finish up while he enjoyed the scenery.

Meredith was a good-looking girl in a bikini, which was as undressed as he’d ever seen her, but his eye was a little more drawn to Kellye, mostly because she was newer to him. As he looked at her, wearing that colorful string bikini, he realized that somehow the perception of her as being a fat girl had been a little wrong. Yes, she was a little on the heavy side, but it was a solid and good-looking heavy. Meredith might have thought of her as fat, but then Meredith had one of those skinny stick figures that were so popular; he knew from experience that there was a superiority complex that skinny girls had over girls who were heavier.

From his own eye – which did not necessarily view things like Meredith’s – there wasn’t anything wrong with Kellye’s body. Yes, that was a tiny bikini that didn’t cover much, but it wasn’t as if she grossly overwhelmed it, either. It did reveal a lot; it showed more bare boobs than Meredith had in total, and then some. Not bad, he thought. Not bad at all.

He didn’t want to be noticed staring at either of his bikini-clad housemates, so he went inside, got a lawn chair and one of his Best Plays books, this one from in the forties, and went out to sit on the lawn with the girls. That way it would look like he was doing something other than what he was doing. He knew that they weren’t that close to the end of Chocolate, Roses and Sex, so they would still be out there for a while.

He was reading over Harvey again, for probably the umpteenth time. It was a hell of a funny play about a man with an imaginary rabbit friend. Brett had never seen the play live, but he had seen the film starring James Stewart. It would be a great deal of fun to be play a part in, he thought. It would be much too big and complicated for the Curlew Creek dinner theater, but maybe someday …

In truth, he was paying little attention to the play, since there were other, more immediate things to draw his interest, the two nice if rather varied examples of feminine flesh lying out before him. They were certainly interesting to contemplate, though he did keep trying to steer his mind back to the familiar play.

Perhaps he had some success, since he didn’t quite notice that the girls were done with the read-through of Chocolate, Roses and Sex – or at least his attention couldn’t extend quite that far. He was just a little startled when he heard Meredith say, just a little sharply, “Hey! Are you staring at us?”

“Who? Me?” he replied a little defensively, just as an idea came to him. “I’m not staring at you, but Harvey is.”

“Harvey?” Meredith looked around. “Who’s Harvey? Where?”

“Harvey’s my friend. He’s a pooka.”

“A what?”

“A pooka.”

“What’s a pooka?”

“Harvey’s a pooka, and he’s a very nice one. Harvey, the mouthy one is Meredith, and the smiling one is Kellye.”

“Brett,” Meredith said with some heat, “who the hell are you talking to?”

“I’m talking to Harvey. He’s right beside me.”

“There’s no one next to you.”

“I didn’t say you could see him,” Brett grinned, picking up on the broad smile on Kellye’s face. She got the joke, or at least was familiar with the play. He had Meredith on the run, though. Maybe he ought to give her a little hint. “Harvey’s invisible,” he went on.

“You have an invisible friend? Brett, what’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s the matter with me. You just can’t see him. Say hello to Meredith, Harvey.” He let a moment go by, then added, “Well, I agree with you, but she’s a lesbian, so it’s just something to think about, that’s all. But I’m sure she appreciates the thought.”

By now Kellye was struggling to control an outbreak of the giggles – and it was fun to watch some of the jiggles that resulted – but Meredith still wasn’t getting it. “I didn’t hear anything,” Meredith said.

“Well, if you can’t see him, I guess it stands to reason you can’t hear him.”

“Brett,” Meredith replied, with an exasperated tone to her voice. “What does Harvey look like?”

“Oh, he’s very good looking, or at least you’d think so if you could see him. He’s about as handsome as a pooka gets.”

“What does a pooka look like?”

“Something like a floppy-eared rabbit,” Brett said. God, if Meredith didn’t get it after this, she must be denser than he thought – or at least not the student of classic plays that he thought she was. “But he’s bigger than a rabbit, he’s six feet three and a half inches tall.”

“A six foot three and a half inch rabbit?” Meredith shook her head. “Brett, are you sure you haven’t been out in the sun too long?”

Kellye couldn’t take it anymore; she broke out laughing. “I thought you two were putting me on,” she managed to gasp after a moment. “Meredith, don’t you see that Brett is doing Elwood P. Dowd from the play Harvey?”

“Oh, shit,” Meredith sighed. “Brett, you got me again, and that time it was a real good one.” She turned to Kellye and added. “He pulls shit like this on me all the time, but I usually don’t walk into it like I did that time. Shit, I should have known better.”

“Meredith,” he broke in, “Why do cows wear bells?”

“Oh, shit, not a cow joke, too. Kellye, first he tortures me by dragging me to a milking parlor, and then I find out he’s got all these really bad cow jokes. Sometimes they about drive me nuts.”

“All right,” Kellye laughed. “Brett, why do cows wear bells?”

“Harvey could tell you. It’s because they don’t have horns. Isn’t that right Harvey?”

“Meredith is right, it is bad.” Kellye grinned. “Cute, childish, but bad.”

“You can see why I have a look-but-don’t-touch policy with him,” Meredith shook her head. “I mean, even if I wasn’t a lesbian it would have to be the way it would be.”

“The best defense is a good offense,” Brett laughed. “Meredith and I tweak each other a lot. Not all the time, and actually it’s backed off a bit since we’ve been here.”

“I haven’t seen her tweaking you very much,” Kellye observed.

“You just haven’t noticed it,” Brett told her. “Her style is different. Mine runs toward put-ons and bad jokes. Her style is to wave her body in front of my face, like in that sexy bikini, when I know the policy is look but don’t touch and isn’t ever going to be any different. It may not be as funny, but let me tell you, it works on me. I’ve seen her do it to other guys, and sometimes it really does get funny.”

“Well, yeah, I suppose it could be that way,” Kellye replied thoughtfully. “I guess since I’m not tuned into girls like a guy would be there’s a reason I wouldn’t see it that way.”

“Oh, he’s right,” Meredith agreed. “And I do it to him when I can, but it doesn’t always work as well as it did when we didn’t know each other as well.” She got up and struck a sexy pose with one thumb hooked into her bikini bottom as if to reveal what little it concealed. Sometimes it’s the only weapon I have.”

If Brett hadn’t been used to Meredith – and her inclinations – it would have been a very hot pose indeed, and it didn’t take him much imagination to think about things that could never be. But, like he’d just said, the best defense was a good offense. “Meredith,” he frowned. “Stand up straight.”

“What? Am I too sexy for you?”

“It’s not that,” he said. “This is something else. Put your feet together and turn towards me.”

A little confused at the turn of the conversation – and suspecting he was up to something, but not sure what, she complied. “Is this what you wanted?” she asked after assuming the pose.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I thought I was right and I guess I was. You’re getting older, Meredith. Or at least, you’ve been eating too much of Kellye’s good cooking.”

“What?” she frowned.

“Your thighs are touching.”

“My thighs are not touching,” she protested. “My thighs have never touched.”

“Looks like it to me,” he shook his head. “Kellye, do you know what you call a girl whose thighs don’t touch?”

“What?” Kelly smirked.

“Bow-legged.”

“I am not bow-legged,” Meredith protested a little harshly, recognizing a tease but still not happy with the implications.

“I’m not sure you’re right on that,” Kellye said. “I would have said knock-kneed.”

“One or the other,” Brett conceded. “You take a look. Which would you call it?”

Kellye looked over at Meredith, who was still standing in the right position, and took a look. “Actually, it’s a little hard to tell,” she said finally, but getting into the spirit of the thing. “It looks to me like her thighs just barely aren’t touching, so I guess I’d have to go for knock-kneed.”

“I am not knock-kneed,” Meredith huffed, feigning indignation.

“Your choice,” Brett grinned. “I think if I was a girl I’d rather be knock-kneed than bowlegged.”

“Neither of you are going to let up on me, are you?” Meredith shook her head. “The heck with you. I’ve got enough sun on one side, so I guess I’d better roast the other.” She turned her back, and made a bit of a show of untying her bikini top and taking it off. She very carefully lay down on the lounge chair, making sure that no one got to see a thing. Brett hadn’t seen her backside in the bikini, but now he could see that it left a lot of butt uncovered. It wasn’t quite a thong, but close.

“You see how that works?” Brett said to Kellye.

“I get the picture,” she said. “You two wouldn’t be pulling stuff like that on each other if you weren’t friends, would you?”

“No, not really,” he replied. “You and I aren’t friends enough yet for me to pull that kind of stuff on you. Meredith and I have known each other for a long time, so we can be a little rough with each other.”

“The hell of it is,” Meredith said from the lounge chair, “That he can tell when he’s got me on the run. It’s a little harder for me to see it when I have him wound up. He doesn’t play fair.”

“Hey, I’m nice,” he protested. “When have I ever dropped a lesbian joke on you?”

“Never,” she conceded. “Most of them I’ve ever heard are a little dirtier than you would tell. Like, what would you call a lesbian with fat fingers?”

Kellye shook her head “I haven’t heard that one.”

“I have,” Brett grinned. “Well hung. I’ve heard some others, and they are much cruder, but I wouldn’t tweak Meredith with them. She can do it to me, because that’s how she does things and she knows it works. Or, at least used to work; I think I’m getting a little immune to them now. But I can play rough, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Right at this moment, I’d give a lot for a glass of iced tea, especially the ice. That bare back is sooo tempting.”

“That would make for an interesting scream, wouldn’t it?” Kellye grinned.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Meredith snorted.

“Go ahead, think that,” he laughed. “Just keep on thinking it. And then, when you least expect it … what do you think, Kellye? Between the shoulder blades, or the small of the back?”

“The small of the back, I think. I know I’d be screaming if you dumped an ice cube on me there.”

“Damn it, Brett, now you’ve got her doing it too,” Meredith protested. “Come on you two, quit torturing me.”

“All right,” Brett conceded. “Let’s talk about the plays. Meredith, the more I think about it, the more I’m not real satisfied with Fair Exchange. It’s just not up to snuff with some of the other things we’ve got going.”

“I’ll have to admit, you might have a point. Maybe we’d better do a little more looking.”

“I’ve got a suggestion,” he said. “Did you ever hear of a play called The Wyrd Sisters?”

“Maybe, but you’re up to something. What is it?”

“Well, the character you’d play spends most of the second act locked in a pillory. That would be lots of fun. For me, anyway, maybe not for you.”

“Shit, you’d do it to me, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, the actual performance wouldn’t be too bad,” he grinned. “But the rehearsals would be a different story. I mean, I can see that we’d have to spend a lot of time on the second act. I mean hours and hours going over it to make sure we have it exactly right.”

“It would make the stage directions for her pretty simple, though,” Kellye pointed out.

“Yeah, she wouldn’t be walking around much,” he agreed.

“I think we’d better skip that one,” Meredith said, rolling toward them just enough to keep from showing anything serious, and she had it down to the millimeter.

“Yeah, probably for this year,” Brett conceded. “Too many characters for this year, and too much staging. But I’m not going to rule it out for another year.”

“Let’s just skip it anyway.”

“You two are something else,” Kellye laughed. “I’m glad you didn’t pull this on me sooner, because I wouldn’t believe either of you if I hadn’t seen you when you’re serious.”

“Hey, it’s fun,” Meredith grinned. “And let’s face it, we’re stuck out here in the country on a day off with nothing much to do. It would be tempting for me to hop in the car, run over to Coopersport and see if I could stir up some action. But it’s too early in the season, it’s Sunday, and that’s mostly a guy scene anyway. At least we can get some fun out of a slow day.”

“When you put it that way, I can see you have a point,” Kellye nodded. “I actually sort of envy the two of you. I mean, I know you’re not romantic and are never going to be, but you really are good friends.” She sighed and went on, “I’ve never had much in the way of friends like that.”

“You can relax about that,” Brett told her. “You’re well on the way to having a couple real good friends. We like you, Kellye, and we think we’re going to have a good time together this summer.”

“Did you set this up for me?”

“Oh, no,” he laughed. “We didn’t plan anything ahead of time. It was just sort of an improv that just happened. Meredith and I are like that and you’re well on the way. Now you’d better roll over yourself, because if you don’t you’re going to get a serious sunburn on your front side, and I don’t think you’d like that.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she agreed, and rolled over.

Brett noticed that her bikini was about as skimpy in back as Meredith’s, but because of her size, it covered proportionally less. It was an interesting view, but he thought he’d better keep his mouth shut about it, at least this time. “Have fun, girls, but don’t overdo it,” he said. “I’m going inside and make myself a glass of iced tea.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Kellye asked, a hint of laughter in her voice, then tempered with a little weaker addition. “Or would you?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

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