The Awakening
It was wet. It had been raining for days, which seemed like weeks. She woke slowly, listening to the water splash down on the metal fire escape outside her bedroom window. She didn't move, there didn't really seem to be any reason to move. Eventually, stretching back into the pillows she shook her head and tried to focus. The sound of the rain outside seemed to get even louder. Maybe she was in Seattle, not Trenton. It was supposed to rain every day there, she thought, not in New Jersey.
She sat up against the headboard, dragging the comforter with her, tucking it under her chin. She stared at the material for a moment – purple with a sprig of flowers repeated over and over again. If she crossed her eyes slightly, she could just see colors and shapes; nothing recognizable, certainly not the daisies, violets and sunflowers that she knew were there.
It was time to get up. If nothing else, she needed to pee. And make coffee. Then she would probably have to pee again. The excitement of the day stretching ahead of her was overwhelming – or not!
Leaving the bathroom after washing her hands and quickly brushing her teeth, she stumbled over one of a pair of black leather boots thrown across the carpet in between the bathroom and her bedroom. Tangled with the 4" high-heeled boot, she twisted her ankle slightly, swore and hopped the rest of the way into the kitchen on one foot.
Waiting for the coffee to brew, she went over to speak to Rex. She tapped lightly on the side of his cage. The hamster didn't move but she could see one of his pink padded rear paws sticking out of the Campbell's chicken noodle soup can she had given him last week. At least, she thought it was a rear paw but, honestly, it could just as easily have been one of the front ones since only a tiny bit was showing.
Pouring her coffee into the neon red and yellow Wonder woman mug that Mary Alice had given her last Christmas; Stephanie slowly added milk and sugar until the coffee turned a beautiful mocha latter shade. She took her drink and moved over to the living room window, pulling the corner of the shade to one side. This allowed her to stare through the glass at the black SUV sitting below in the parking lot. She wondered which Rangeman had been stuck with babysitting duty today. Probably not Hal, the last time he had been charged with watching her, she had managed to stun him with his own weapon. She still felt guilty about that even though it had seemed like the thing to do at that time.
She took another sip of coffee, sighed and wondered who had first thought of making a drink from coffee beans. A freakin' genius, whoever it was to paraphrase her friend Sally Sweet, a 6'5" cross-dressing musician whose vocabulary was peppered with 4 letter words. Sally liked, no loved, coffee too. Laughing to herself softly, she thought back to the last time the two of them had gotten together for coffee in the little Internet café that had opened up a few blocks from Rangeman headquarters on Haywood Ave in downtown Trenton.
Her phone started to ring loudly, startling her out of her abstract musing. Loudly? Where was her cell? Oh. Who knows why but she must have left it on the windowsill last night. The windowsill she was now leaning on.
Yo.
Babe.
What?
You might not want to stand next to the window dressed like that.
Stephanie looked down. Shit. She was naked. She stepped back from the window, tripped over what turned out to be the other FMP black suede boot she had worn last night and started to swear as she managed to drop the cell phone in her right hand directly into the almost empty coffee mug in her left. Double shit. She was sure she could still hear Ranger's voice coming faintly from inside the mug.
Babe.