Three times Jeff woke to find her seated in his kitchen, her silver head stooped over the candle-lit table, fieldstripping her greased weapons and carefully reloading them.
She brought back food and drink, including a bottle of fine Polish vodka.
They would sit and discuss the Civil War battles for hours, using his models to play over the various elements of the long campaigns.
For much of this time, Jeff Thomas was really happy. He felt secure with her, warm and well fed, while the anarchy outside rarely intruded.
One morning he woke to hear her easing open the security door, the Port Royale in her hands. She was wearing only a white cotton T-shirt and pale purple satin bikini pants. Despite her age, Nanci’s body was in fantastic condition.
Seeing him awake, she put a finger to her lips, then vanished into the corridor. Several minutes later Jeff heard the silk-ripping sound of the gun on full auto.
A couple of days before, Nanci had stolen a gun for him, a stainless-steel Smith & Wesson 4506. The big .45 had an 8-round magazine, a five-inch barrel and wraparound Delrin stocks and a serrated hammer spur with adjustable rear sight.
“It will stop a charging buffalo,” she’d said. “Only advice I’ll give you, Jeff, is to use it when you mean it and mean it when you use it.”
Now, with the gunfire still echoing in his ears, he grabbed it and ran out of the door, picking his way down the stairs to the second floor. He found her there calmly checking that each of the four bodies at her feet were all dead.
They were.
She looked up and saw him there, wearing only his underpants, holding the gun.
“Come here,” she said. “My firm recollection is that I told you never to come out unless I called for you.”
“Thought you might need help.”
“Nice thought, but wrong.” She slapped him so hard and fast across the face, both cheeks, that he nearly fell over. “It’s important that you learn to do what I say.”
“Sorry,” he muttered.
Then Nanci had smiled, reached out with her right hand and slid it inside his pants to cup him with strong fingers, bringing him to instant hardness. “Nice of you to worry, though. Now let us go up to bed and make some long, slow loving.”
Jeff had never made love to a woman over sixty before. In fact, as he studied himself in the full-length bathroom mirror afterward, he couldn’t remember making love to any woman over twenty-one.
His face showed the marks of her slap, and his cheeks and chin were reddened from her insistence on his pleasuring her with his tongue.
There were scratches on his shoulder and across his lower stomach. His jaw ached, and much lower down it felt as though he had been massaged with a red chili paste.
But it had been the best sex he’d ever known.
THE DIGITAL calendar clock on the wall of the kitchen showed November 12, 2040, eleven-thirty at night. Outside it was a dull, cold evening, with a mixture of fog and drizzle coming in off the bay.
They’d just been reworking the Battle of Chickamauga, with its dubious, hollow triumph for the army of Tennessee. Thirty-five thousand men fallen and nothing gained.
Nanci had stood up and stretched. “Bedtime, Jefferson. Get that educated tongue of yours ready to give me some slow loving.” She looked at the tiny figures in blue and gray. “Shame we have to leave in the morning. I was working up to Sherman’s march to the sea.”
“Can we take the models with us, Nanci?”
“No. Not enough space in the Mercedes.”
“The what?”
“Found it days ago,” she said, her hand resting on his shoulder and sending a thrill of pleasure through him. “Got it filled up with gas and garaged out on Cedar, near Van Ness.”
“Terrific. I like to go in style.”
“So you’re grateful to me, Jeff?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” Her fingers slid inside his shirt, over his chest, seeking the left nipple, finding it and tightening, making him gasp with pain and excitement. She squeezed tighter, making him bite his lip. Her face was against his, her breath warm on his cheek. “I trust that you’ll be very grateful to me, Jeff.”