Chapter III: Tuesday Afternoon
It was mid-afternoon before Roger finally arrived at the Bimbeauville pumping station. He guessed the walk would have taken half an hour had he not been so distracted. Roger didn’t care. Perhaps his walk had not been efficient, but it had been exceptionally pleasant.
The pumphouse was a small, neat building of red brick, with big windows and a steep tile roof. It was located at the bottom of the hill at the edge of town, near the river, like a gatehouse between urban comforts and rocky wildland. A sheep bleated in the distance. A boulder-strewn stream nearby gurgled and splashed as it tumbled down from the hills. Someone had planted larkspur around the big sign that said “Bimbeauville Water”.
Roger opened the metal door and poked his head inside. “Hello?” he said. He stepped into an antechamber, then through another door into what was clearly the main control room. Gauges and computer screens crowded one wall, below the big windows.
Only one of the several chairs in the room was occupied. A big man in coveralls and a hard hat was sitting in front of the control panel, his hands folded across his chest. He had white hair and a heavy white beard. He was fast asleep.
Roger set down his valise of equipment, glad to be rid of the weight. “Ahem, excuse me,” he said, “Sorry to disturb you . . .”
The man stirred. “Wha? Uh? Oh . . . oh, yes, dear me, I must have drifted off.” He got to his feet. “Awfully sorry. You’re the fellow from the DWI then, come to check the well?”
“That’s right,” said Roger. “A routine check to be sure the new system is settled in properly. My associate is verifying pressure in the network. It’s for me to check the well.”
The white-haired man extended a hand. “Wyn’s my name. You’re welcome to our little town, lad.”
“Roger,” Roger said, shaking hands. “I have been made to feel very welcome, believe me. Have you had any problems with the new well?” He dipped into his bag and retrieved a tablet. He started a blank page and began tapping notes with one hand.
“Nary a one,” his host replied. “Or none big enough to get concerned about.” He pulled a thick binder off the desk. “There’s the daily log. I’ve flagged all the upsets. We had a bit of trouble with low water last August, but then it rained and we were fine.”
Roger took the binder awkwardly in his free hand. There were only a handful of yellow sticky notes. “This is going to be easy,” he said.
Wyn grinned through his beard. He had strong white teeth. “It’s a good well now, isn’t it. Government drilled it for us, after the mine flooded. They got right down to the aquifer. Pretty good flow, most days.”
Roger had set the binder on a work table and was poring through the logs. “I see,” he said absently. “You work here by yourself?”
Wyn chuckled. “Oh no, too much work for an old man like me, isn’t it. I settle my shanks here in the control room and watch the gauges. The twins do most of the maintenance and such.”
“The twins?”
“My nieces. Keepin’ it in the family. I’ll call them for you.” He picked up a black phone mounted on one wall, waited a few seconds for someone to answer, then said, “Girls, get your cute asses over here right now. The fellow from the DWI is here.”
He rang off. Within seconds the sound of footfalls in an outside corridor could be heard. Then a door on the far side of the room opened and the twins arrived.
“Here we are Uncle Wyn!” one of them said.
Roger looked up from his work. “Oh no,” he breathed.
The twins looked young, barely past high school age. But they were as shapely as every other woman he had seen in this boob-blessed town. They were both wearing hard hats and mirror-black work boots. These were the only concessions to conventional work gear. One girl wore a yellow baby-T, the other a blue-striped halter. Both wore skin-tight denim shorts.
The girl on the left, whose hard hat was yellow, wore over-the-knee socks with broad horizontal stripes of yellow and black. The girl on the right wore a blue hard hat and socks striped blue and white. Both girls have long blonde ponytails spilling out from under their hats.
“This lad is Roger,” Uncle Wyn supplied, “come to make sure our waterworks is working as they should.”
“Hi there, Roger,” said the girl in the yellow hard hat. She pointed to her sister. “She’s Glynis.”
“And she’s Glenys,” said the girl in the blue hat.
“G-good afternoon,” Roger managed. He was trying to address the girls without ogling. The task was impossible; his eyes encountered half-bare feminine curves wherever they roamed.
Glenys said: “Uncle Wyn told us you were like, coming to look at the well but he never said you’d be so darn cute!” She advanced toward him, hips swaying.
“Ohmygod you are totally my new favourite teddy bear!” Glynis exclaimed. She took his arm and snuggled up close. Her exuberant boobs rubbed against his fore-arm.
Glenys joined her on the other side. “I think I may never let you go,” she said.
“Glub,” said Roger. “I mean, uhm, ah-ah-ah . . . ”
Wyn saved him from making a total stuttering fool of himself. “Girls, why don’t you give Roger a tour of the facility. Show him the pumps and the filters and all that.”
“Love to,” said the girl on the left.
“Awesome!” said the girl on the right. She picked up Roger’s tablet and handed it to him. Without letting go, they escorted him out the door.
The facility, once Roger pulled his eyes off the twins long enough to look at it, was perfectly typical and well maintained. The pipes were clean and freshly painted in coded colours to indicate what kind of water each carried. The floors were immaculately clean. The well-head was seated in the centre of a big room with several enormous, noisy pumps arranged around it.
Roger made notes on his tablet. He checked gauges and inspected pipes. He tried to keep his attention on the job, and not on the twin’s blooming busts, or their perfect asses, or long legs, or pretty much anything really. He made a lot of spelling mistakes. He was hard the entire visit.
A couple of anomalies caught his eye. The first was that the walls, and occasionally the floor, were painted in a panoply of nursery-room hues instead of the institutional beige he expected. “Uncle Wyn lets us repaint the walls when we get bored,” Glenys explained. She was standing close beside him. “That’s still tidy, isn’t it?” She walked two fingers up his chest.
“No, that’s fine,” Roger replied, “no regulations about home decor. Or . . .uhm, ornaments.” He was staring at her chest, again.
The second anomaly was a hose attached to the well-head, emerging from the maze of pipes and pumps like a tap root. It stretched across the back of the room to a fitting on the outside wall. Roger studied the water-flow diagram on his tablet. “Say, what’s this then?” he asked, more curious than concerned. “It’s not on the chart.”
Glynis flipped a hand. She wore sparkling nail polish. “Oh, Uncle Wyn says that’s like, an overflow valve or something. Cuz of the new well.”
“Sometimes pressure can like build up, you know?” Glenys explained from the other side. “And then like, it has to be relieved, before something blows.” She was leaning in close, almost whispering in his ear.
“Yes, well I understand that, but it’s " He was distracted by Glynis, who chose that moment to bend over and adjust one bright-banded sock. Her shorts were so tight they looked like she had painted pockets on her ass. Roger’s underwear lurched.
“It’s what, darling?” cooed Glenys.
“It’s uhm, fine, I’m sure,” Roger said absently. “Perfectly fine.” He was no longer looking at the overflow pipe. The girls’ tops were overflowing, and it was Roger’s cock that desperately needed relief.
“Let’s get out of this noisy room,” Glenys suggested. Roger didn’t resist as she led him away.
The last stop of the tour was the distribution hub, where water was shunted off into a dozen underground mains to serve the town. The girls had painted the room sky blue, and then added flowers and birds all around. “This all looks fine,” said Roger, who by now had an arm around each of his young guides. Glynis had relieved him of his tablet. She was entering notes for him with long-nailed fingers. She tended to skip big words.
The last step in the water treatment was the addition of chlorine for disinfection. Roger barely glanced toward the chlorination machinery along one wall. The girls’ bodies were closer, and much more interesting. Then he did a double take. “What what the hell?” he declared. He disengaged himself from the twins long enough to take a closer look at the chlorinator. The control panel was dark.
“You you’ve disconnected the chlorinator! It’s turned off!”
Glenys put a finger between her lips. “Uncle Wyn says we don’t need it any more,” she said.
Glynis said: “And it like ruined the taste of the water too.”
“Mmmm, yes, without the, like, coronation or whatever, the water tastes soooo good.”
“But, but, you can’t just turn off chlorination! That’s a public health hazard. People could get sick!”
Glenys stepped up close. “Oh, but nobody does,” she said. “Not in Bimbeauville.”
Glynis joined her sister. She pressed her impressive rack against his chest. “Uncle Wyn says we haven’t had anybody get sick from the water in like, ever after we turned off that stupid machine.”
“It way ruined the taste of the water,” said Glenys. She was rubbing one leg against his inside thigh.
Roger was attempting to process this preposterous information while resisting the advances of two of Bimbeauville’s super-sexy sirens at the same time. A doomed effort. “But but but,” he sputtered. “What, what about the chlorine? You’ve been receiving five barrels a week for five years!”
Glenys toyed with his shirt buttons, unfastening a few. “Oh, that. We store it out back. Then Uncle Wyn sells it to the other villages, Vargys and Jjyffar, up the road.”
“He calls it, like, covering costs, or something,” Glynis explained. Her boobs bounced with every giggle.
“Oh man. Girls, this is serious,” Roger said.
Glenys pouted like a spoiled sixteen-year-old. “Are you going to report us, Roger?”
“We don’t want to get in any trouble.”
“Well, I have oh!” A hand feathered gently across his erection.
“Let’s go back to the break room for a minute luv,” Glynis whispered. She guided a hand to her denim-coated ass. “And we’ll like, totally explain everything.”
She began to pull him away as she spoke. Roger found himself following. Might as well listen to what the girls had to say, right? He couldn’t seem to remove his hand from her rump.
The break room in the pumping station was larger and more agreeable than Roger expected. The girls had painted the walls magenta. Colourful rugs were strewn all over the floor. There were a couple of lockers at one end (one yellow, one blue) for their work gear.
The rest of the room was more of a den than a workroom. In front of the oversize television there were beanie chairs and piles of cushions (most with a kitten motif), a kitchenette with a refrigerator (well stocked with local beer, it turned out), and a gigantic chesterfield.
It was this last piece of furniture that the trio indulged while Glenys and Glynis did their best to convince Roger that forgoing disinfection in a rural public water system was like, totally cool. “Care for a drink, luv?” Glenys asked, already skipping toward the fridge.
“Uhm, sure, whatever you have is fine,” Roger replied. “Look, I’m seriously concerned about the lack of oh.”
Glynis (presumably) had snuggled up beside him on the giant sofa. She took off her hard hat and tossed it away. “Teddy-bear, you worry too much. Bimbeauville water is like, the best. Do we have to keep buzzing about that silly clorogation thingie?”
“Well, uhm . . . uh . . .” Roger mumbled. He found himself confronting her blue-eyed face, very close. She slid one leg down between his. He could feel her tits pressing against his chest.
“See, you’re forgetting about it already,” she whispered, leaning in for a kiss.
The kiss was long and sweet. When it finally ended, Glenys was curled up on Roger’s other side, a chilled bottle in her hand. She had discarded both her hat and her boots. “Here, have a drink, luv,” she said. She tipped the bottle to his lips. She deliberately spilled a little down her own cleavage. “Oh! You’ll clean that up for me, won’t you?”
“Oh fuck,” Roger muttered. It was a declaration of unconditional surrender. He leaned over and began to lick rivulets of beer off Glynis’s breasts.
The summer sun was drawing toward the west when Roger finally roused himself. He was lying on the floor, resting on rugs and cushions, nestled comfortably between the napping twins. One girl was sucking her thumb while she slept. The other had her hand lightly curled around his cock. Both were mostly naked now, save for their cute striped socks. Coincidentally, that was all Roger was wearing too. It had been a busy afternoon.
He disengaged himself from the sleeping beauties. He found his clothes and lazily pulled them on. He was exhausted, and satisfied, and very, very relaxed.
A picture window on the far end of the room overlooked the valley outside town. It was a pleasant view. The low land was mostly open. Roger could make out white farmhouses in the distance. The hills were shrouded in forest.
Nearby, the merry brook that he had seen on his way in hurried down from the hill above Bimbeauville, splashing and gurgling and swirling in pools. The low-angled sun turned the water intense blue; where it splashed over a stone, each drop sparkled in the air like a topaz. The overflow pipe from the well head extended out from the back of the building and emptied into the stream.
Roger was sitting in the inn early that evening when Sarah arrived. He was eating roasted trout and admiring Megan, the waitress. Uncle Wyn had given Roger a lift back to the Winking Fox in a battered Citroen that looked older than him. Roger was grateful for the ride. After an afternoon with Wyn’s nieces, Roger wasn’t sure he had the strength left to walk all the way up the hill. As his supervisor approached the table, Roger was treated to another surprise.
Sarah was wearing a dress. The dress was form-fitting, and hemmed a few inches above her knees. It was deep sky blue on top, grading to navy at the bottom. Roger reflected that he had never seen Sarah’s legs before. They were shapelier than he expected. They were dressed in sheer hose and blue, wedge-heeled shoes. She had her map and notes with her.
She read Roger’s expression as she approached the table. “All right, all right. Don’t say anything. I got talked into it.” She set her workbook on the table. “The high street in this town is phenomenal. I’ve never seen anything like it. Dress shops, lingerie shops, shoe stores, jewellers. In a little mining town! And everything glitter and glamour and high heels; clothes for party girls and show-offs. There was an entire shop devoted to a designer named Hugh Mussobay, a man I’ve never heard of. Weird.”
She sat down. “I’m famished. Is there anything good for supper?”
“Try the fish,” Roger replied. “It’s excellent. Are you all right?” She was fidgeting in her seat.
Sarah stopped trying to tug down her dress. “This is the longest one they had,” she explained. “And I had to go to the juniors’ section to find a dress that fit me on top.”
Megan appeared, looking delightful in a wispy summer dress as light as morning mist. White court shoes with heels so high she was almost walking on her toes. “Hi!” she said brightly. “What can I get for you?” She filled Sarah’s water glass.
“She’ll have the trout,” Roger said. Then to Sarah: “Trust me.”
“And more water,” Sarah said, already drinking. “I’m parched.”
“Sure thing luv,” the leggy waitress sang. She puckered a kiss for Roger behind Sarah’s back, then minced away in her super-high heels. Her nylons shimmered.
“How did it go at the pumping station?” Sarah asked.
Roger was busy memorizing Megan’s legs. “What? Oh, right. It looks good. The supervisor is hiring his relatives, but the well is reliable. The only problem is " He was about to mention the disconnected chlorination. He thought about Glynis and Glenys, and the lovely view out the window of the break room. He changed his mind. “Uhm, otherwise, no, uh, major issues.” He suddenly decided to drink beer.
“Though, there is one thing,” he said a moment later. “They had to put in an overflow pipe to drain excess flow. Apparently the pressure builds up sometimes.”
Sarah frowned. “The well isn’t artesian. How can there be excess pressure?”
“Wondered about that myself. May I see the map?”
He unrolled the map across the table. There were figures jotted all along one side: Sarah’s pressure readings.
Roger traced a blue line with his finger. “This stream here. It runs right behind the pump house. It’s quite lovely. Deep blue water.” He turned his head to read the name. “Afon Nyllrym. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“Never heard of it,” said Sarah. She held up her empty water glass. Megan wiggled over to refill it. She stood with her back toward Roger and bent over a little more than necessary. Her baby-doll dress was very brief.
“Nyllrym,” Roger mused. “Where have I seen that is some ass! I mean, I mean, where have I seen that thong that name! before?” Sarah was busy drinking. “Man this water is good,” she enthused.
Roger pointed to the notes on the map. He said: “You’ve been busy.”
She shrugged. “The pressure in the mains is fine everywhere I checked. I could have done more but . . . I got distracted in the afternoon.”
“Oh?” He decided not to mention his own distractions. At the moment he had a thong running through his head.
Sarah actually looked embarrassed. “I had to go down the high street, past all those shops. Everybody kept looking at me, like I was a street urchin. It was . . . uncomfortable. Everyone here is always dressed up. I wanted to, I don’t know, fit in a little. Makes the job a little easier.”
“Makes sense.” Actually, he was uncertain how much sense it made to wear a dress and heels while driving around checking water pressure. Still, it wasn’t like she was doing plumbing repairs. He regarded his supervisor covertly. Sarah looked prettier than he remembered. Her face no longer seemed so pinched, nor her nose so prominent. Had her hair been that long before? Or her lips that full?
But come on, he told himself, this is Sarah: the Ice Queen; the Witch of the Water Mains; Sarah the Severe. He was imagining things. It was all some mental transfer from seeing nothing but sexy women all day. Probably. He watched Sarah’s bust rise and fall beneath the snug dress as she breathed. Fortunately, Megan arrived with Sarah’s supper and Roger found someone more interesting to stare at.
“Have you noticed something odd about this town?” Sarah asked, sometime later. They were sitting in the pub, relaxing after dinner. The dishes had been cleared away. Roger was on his third pint. Sarah was drinking her umpteenth glass of water.
“Odd?” said Roger. “Odd how?” He admired two young lovelies passing by, drinks in hand. They were both in skin-tight yoga pants and gaudy heels.
“Oh come on, you must have noticed. Everyone is so healthy. Look around you.” She gestured with her water glass toward the townsfolk gathered in the pub for the evening. Roger heard laughter. “No one seems to be fat. Or skinny. Or grey and bent and nursing a head cold. And the women. They’re all stacked. Not to mention all the other curves, and the beauty-queen smiles, and the perfect hair. It’s . . . it’s unnatural.“
Roger was busy confirming all the features that Sarah had mentioned. “What are you suggesting?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But it seems bizarre. This is a mining town. It looks more like a Hollywood resort.” She paused to toss back her hair, a gesture Roger had never seen before.
“Plenty of farmers hereabout. Fresh air and exercise? Healthy diet?”
She shook her head. “That accounts for some of it, maybe. But fresh air and exercise do not give you a figure like that honey over there.” She was referring to a top-heavy brunette spilling out of glittery bustier-and-shorts outfit, but really it could have been anybody. The brunette laughed at a friend’s joke. Her boobs bounced.
Roger said: “Well, what are the possibilities? Exceptional genes among an isolated population? A virus that makes people healthier? Never heard of that. Something in the air?” Sarah said: “It could be something in the air, I suppose. Maybe a gas from the old mine shafts that . . . I don’t know, over-stimulates the pituitary gland or something. Or maybe " She stopped, horrified. She held up her glass. “What if it’s something in the water?”
Roger laughed. “Sarah, whoa, hold on. The town sends a water sample to the central lab for chemical and microbiological testing every quarter. If there was anything amiss with the water, surely we would know about it.”
“Yes, of course, you’re right.” She was clearly relieved. “That’s good because this is the best water I’ve ever tasted.” She drained her glass and immediately signalled Megan for a refill.
“On that subject,” Sarah said, when her water glass was full again, “what did your water tests turn up?”
“What water?” Roger was distracted. Megan had dropped a spoon while filling Sarah’s glass. She bent over gracefully from the waist to pick it up. Her back was toward Roger. Picking up the spoon took a very long time. “Oh, uh, right, I uhm, didn’t get around to finishing the water tests. I, uhm, ran out of time.”
“You ran out of time? You had the whole day! How could you " Suddenly she laughed. “Oh, who am I to talk? I was supposed to be checking pressure and I spent the afternoon trying on dresses!” She laughed again. Roger looked at her in wonder. He was the one drinking all the beer.
“Anyway, I’m all in,” Roger’s suddenly cheerful companion declared. “I’m off to bed.” She drained her glass and got to her feet.
“I have an idea,” Roger said. “We’re pretty much on schedule. Why don’t we take some time off tomorrow and see if there is a doctor in town. Perhaps he could tell us why everyone looks so . . . fit.”
Sarah nodded. “Good idea. Tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow morning I have to go see about a new bra. This one is driving me crazy.” She shifted her shoulders this way and that, trying to get comfortable. “Good night.” She yawned hugely, then headed off toward the back stairs.
Roger watched her go. Nice legs, he said to himself. Sarah has nice legs. Who knew?
“Care for a fresh pint then?” Megan was suddenly close beside him. She had wide blue eyes with long, up-curling lashes.
Roger contemplated his empty pint glass. “No, I don’t think I should,” he said. “I have to work tomorrow.”
“Hello there,” said a new voice. The woman in the glittering shorts and top was standing beside his table. She was accompanied by a second woman, equally hot, whose skimpy outfit included over-the-knee, orange boots. “You’re like, the fellow from the city, right? Come to look at the water and stuff?”
“T-that’s right,” said Roger. He was trying to decide where to ogle first. “My name is Roger.”
“I’m Nia,” said the vision in sparkling short-shorts.
“Tegan,” said the babe in the tight orange boots. “Care to join us for a pint?”
Roger was grinning like an idiot. He couldn’t help it. “Well, I suppose one more couldn’t hurt.”
Nia and Tegan took his arms on each side and led him back to their table. Roger said, “Man, I like this town!”
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