"They're your clothes too, Mr. Stuart Redman. You may be a Founding Father and all that, but you still leave an occasional skidmark in your underdrawers."
Stu grinned, the grin broadened, and finally he had to laugh. "That's crude, darlin."
"Right now I don't feel particularly delicate."
"Well, pop out for a minute. I need to talk to you."
She was glad to, even though she would have to wash her feet before getting back in. Her heart was hurrying along, not happily but rather dolefully, like a faithful piece of machinery being misused by someone with a marked lack of good sense. If this was the way my great-great-great-grandmother had to do it, Fran thought, then maybe she was entitled to the room which eventually became my mother's precious parlor. Maybe she thought of it as hazard pay, or something like that.
She looked down at her feet and lower legs with some discouragement. There was still a thin sheath of gray soapsuds clinging to them. She brushed at it distastefully.
"When my wife handwashed," Stu said, "she used a... what do you call it? Scrub-board, I think. My mother had about three, I remember."
"I know that," Frannie said, irritated. "June Brinkmeyer and I walked over half of Boulder looking for one. We couldn't find a single one. Technology strikes again."
He was smiling again.
Frannie put her hands on her hips. "Are you trying to piss me off, Stuart Redman?"
"No'm. I was just thinking I know where I can get you a scrub-board, I think. Juney too, if she wants one."
"Where?"
"You let me look and see first." His smile disappeared, and he put his arms around her and his forehead on hers. "You know I appreciate you washing my clothes," he said, "and I know that a woman who is pregnant knows better than her man what she should and shouldn't be doing. But, Frannie, why bother?"
"Why? " She looked at him, perplexed. "Well, what are you going to wear? Do you want to go around in dirty clothes?"
"Frannie, the stores are full of clothes. And I'm an easy size."
"What, throw out old ones just because they're dirty?"
He shrugged a little uneasily.
"No way, uh-uh," she said. "That's the old way, Stu. Like the boxes they used to put your Big Mac in or the no-deposit-no-return bottles. That's no way to start over."
He gave her a little kiss. "All right. Only next washday it's my turn, you hear?"
"Sure." She smiled a little slyly. "And how long does that last? Until I deliver?"
"Until we get the power back on," Stu said. "Then I'm going to bring you the biggest, shiniest washer you ever saw, and hook it up myself."
"Offer accepted." She kissed him firmly and he kissed back, his strong hands moving restlessly in her hair. The result was a spreading warmth (hotness, let's not be coy, I'm hot and he always gets me hot when he does that) that first peaked her ni**les, then spread down into her lower belly.
"You better stop," she said rather breathlessly, "unless you plan to do more than talk."
"Maybe we'll talk later."
"The clothes - "
"Soaking's good for that grimed-in dirt," he said seriously. She started to laugh and he stopped her mouth with a kiss. As he lifted her, set her on her feet, and led her inside, she was struck by the warmth of the sun on her shoulders and wondered, Was it ever so hot before? So strong? It's cleared up every last blemish on my back... could it be the ultraviolet, I wonder, or the altitude? Is it this way every summer? Is it this hot?
And then he was doing things to her, even on the stairs he was doing things to her, making her naked, making her hot, making her love him.
"No, you sit down," he said.
"But - "
"I mean it, Frannie."
"Stuart, they'll congeal or something. I put half a box of Tide in there - "
"Don't worry."
So she sat down in the lawn chair in the building's shady overhang. He had set up two of them when they came back down. Stu took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pants past the knee. As he stepped into the washtub and began gravely to stomp up and down on the clothes, she began to giggle helplessly.
Stu looked over and said, "You want to spend the night on the couch?"
"No, Stuart," she said with grave repentance, and then began to giggle again... until tears ran down her cheeks and the little muscles in her stomach felt rubbery and weak. When she had some control again she said, "For the third and last time, what did you come back to talk about?"
"Oh yeah." He marched back and forth, and by now he had worked up quite a bed of lather. A pair of bluejeans floated to the surface and he stomped them back down, sending a creamy squirt of soapsuds onto the lawn. Frannie thought: It looks a little like... oh no, away with that, away with that unless you want to laugh yourself into a miscarriage.
"We've got that first ad hoc meeting tonight," Stu said.
"I've got two cases of beer, cheese crackers, cheese spread, some pepperoni that should still be - "
"That's not it, Frannie. Dick Ellis came by today and said he wanted off the committee."