Chapter 11

Cindy's turn:

And the news leaks out. Well, it didn't exactly LEAK. Nikki just came out and TOLD us. Her Dan's scheduled for surgery this summer. Getting re-plumbed. I entertained the thought when I found out about Tina and Susan being pregnant that reversals were something WE all talked about.

I mean, seeing Terri 'n' Rachel running around like they do, it restores one's faith in the propagation of the species. Of course seeing a few feral kids rampaging through the grocery store on Saturday morning will negate those feelings.

Besides, I'm sixteen. Gonna be seventeen at the end of the summer, but right now, sixteen. Physically old enough. Just ain't there yet. Subject of cuddly questions with Dan. We know the data about that whole reversal thing. The longer you wait, the lower the chance of success.

I'm absolutely happy for every one of 'em. I giggled appropriately when Nikki repeated her Dan's Idiocracy comment. We've all seen the movie and that Saturday morning grocery store thing is, in my little opinion, proof of the concept.

I'm such a deprived little waif, after all. My mom and I could've fit right in with that Saturday morning crowd. Did, as a matter of fact, on the odd Saturday that she was home and woke up before noon.

Mom. I laugh. Mom, who never touched a computer the whole time I knew 'er, now in possession of the latest Apple offering and on vacation in Hawaii with Mister Bill. 'Vacation'? Make that 'honeymoon'. I get two or three pictures a day, dutifully posted to the community bulletin board (online – like our little Facebook). She's happy. Mister Bill's happy.

Mom sent me a personal note. I imagine her giggling. 'Amazing stamina' is the term she used. I'm thinking that MOM might be the one of us to reproduce. I've warned her to be careful and gotten the "YOU are lecturing ME about birth control?!?" reply. I knew she was laughing ... I hope. Still, if she and Mister Bill decide, it's not MY place to stand in their way. Dan reminds me that Mom has the capability of shucking out some pretty good kids.

"One, Dan," I said. "You can't plot a curve with a single data point."

At which point he rolled me over off the sofa and onto the floor and attacked me. I attacked right back. Then we're lying there together on the floor, both trying to stabilize our breathing.

"I know you're thinking right now, redhead," he says, kissing my bangs aside. It's his fetish and I am perfectly good with it.

"Yeah ... I was just thinking that this is the first time that I know Mom is out having sex and I'm okay with it."

He laughed. "Yeah, I remember the moves your mom put on me. I wouldn't've done 'er with somebody else's dick."

"Dan!!!" I squeaked.

"That's the old Donna. Now she seems perfect for Bill. She wanted somebody to devote herself to that was worth the effort."

"Mister Bill's worth it."

"He is. I hope it turns out good for them."

"You see the pictures," I said.

"Yeah. Great start. Hawaii."

Giggle. "Yeah ... Our wedding night was in an Alabama RV park."

"I don't remember. The stars in heaven shut down because they couldn't compete with the sparkle in my true love's eyes..."

"You, Dan Richards, are too poetic for your own good." I kissed him. "And the honeymoon's always been in my head, anyway. Wouldn't do a thing different, not from the thunderstorm onward..."

We finally got up. I noted the spot left on the carpet, tried dabbing up the worst of it.

"Tell people we have pets," he said. "It's true. I do."

I know he stares at me still. I quit asking myself why. In the almost three years that I've known Dan, I've grown a whole two inches taller. I weigh ten pounds more. My hips have a bit more of a flare to them, and my poor, once so inadequate titties have actually gotten to completely FILL an A-cup. I can wear a B, but it ain't full.

Hair's still red. I threatened Dan with coloring it. He smiled. "Orange. Like Milla Jovovich in Fifth Element. Otherwise, NO!" It's still short. I never let it get to my collar. Dan likes my neck. And I do NOT do makeup.

And he adores me. There are much worse things that happen in the universe.

I still wake up at two in the morning. The last time, I sat in bed beside my sleeping Dan, clasping my arms around my knees. I can't explain how it happens, what triggers it, but I swear I was visualizing electron movements at the atomic level, right along with the magnetic fields surrounding the flows. I know we're working on some energy transfer ideas at the lab.

I walked into Doctor Embert's office the next morning.

"Cindy, you have that look in your eye."

"Doctor E," I said, "I woke up this morning thinking about the electrical power transfer. Here's what I came up with. I walked to her whiteboard, sketched symbols, wrote a couple of equations. "I think we can test this. Here's the design I have in mind."

She listened, watched, rocked back in her chair, for an hour and a half, questioning, jotting notes. Finally, I quit.

She spoke. "Cindy Smith-Richards, you, dear lady, are no engineer. You are a physicist. Put that in a paper. Let's set up to qualify your theories. I'm going to get you a doctorate."

"No, Doctor E. I'm an engineer."

"I saw to it that you got a bachelor's in physics, Cindy. I shorted you. You're too damned good for me to let go. Please, please, tell me you'll do this. I'll GIVE you the stinkin' lab."

I left Doctor E's office and went to the cubicle that I shared with Nikki, who was off making money somewhere else.

One of the other grad students stuck his head around the corner. "Trouble?"

"No, Shawn," I said. "Remember that idea about the high temperature superconductors?"

"Your idea, not mine."

"Our idea. See if we can get some of that material. I want to bus it up and run some high current profiles..."

"Look, Lee-loo," he said.

"Cindy. The name is Cindy."

He laughed. "People think I work with Lee-loo Dallas. I showed 'em your picture."

"I'm not tall enough. And YOU will NEVER see me in thermal bandages." I giggled. "I save those for my husband."

"Close as I'll ever get," he laughed. "I talked with you about the materials. YOU are the one who wants to go with saturable reactors and control things to parallel 'em..." he looked at me. I smiled.

"Okay. Stuff's gonna be expensive. Let me get a handle on it."

I pulled my keyboard out and opened a folder. New document. Looks like a doctoral thesis.

Later, Nikki's got me cornered.

"Somebody told me that you spent an hour and half in Gru's office." Gru, the lead character in Despicable Me, was an evil mastermind. That would be Doctor E. We were her minions. She warmed up to it, and we had those little yellow minion characters all over the place. "So what's up?"

"I woke up last night, thinking."

"Uh-oh."

"Don't be mean," I said. "I know you are similarly afflicted. I had visions of electrons at the atomic level ... I was just discussing what I came up with."

"Oh, okay."

"She wants me to stand for a doctorate."

"Wha... ????"

"That's what I said."

"Well," Nikki smiled, "You're ahead again. I guess I'll have to perfect my design for a household fusion reactor."

"It's not a race and you know it."

"I know," Nikki laughed. "Now, show me what you're doing..."

I told Dan.

"That's it. I'm going in the closet and closing the door. I need darkness and quiet."

"Don't do that, baby," I said, kissing him. "I need my Dan."

"Okay, let's work on THAT idea. Remember that nature show about the anglerfish?"

"Vaguely." When I said it, I was pulling that memory up. I gasped.

"No..."

"Yep. I feel like that male anglerfish. I just sort of latch on to my female and spend the rest of my life providing her with sex."

I giggled. "Fair trade! And I will keep you fed and protected," I said. "And you are sooooo wrong..."

"How am I wrong?"

"Did you ever know somebody with a doctorate in physics who was rich?"

"I never knew somebody who was a doctoral candidate in physics at all. Are they ALL this cute?"

Tina comes to me, laughing. "The news is out. Doctor E told EVERYBODY. Said that you're team lead for the power delivery group."

"She could've waited until I was there..."

"Nah, then we couldn't talk about you like we did."

"Okay, what're people saying?"

"Mind like Sheldon Cooper. Body like Penny." The Big Bang Theory was another popular show that figured frequently around the lab.

"Body like Penny. I wish..."

"Dan doesn't. The guy stays incredibly serene..."

"And I am MUCH nicer than Sheldon Cooper."

"Well, they ALL know. You can expect a higher level of harassment."

"Got it. I'm going in tomorrow. Gonna borrow Rachel's tiara."

"That's our Cindy. Best defense is a good offense."

"Preemptive strike," I said. "Let's go in early so I'll be wearin' it when the rest get there."

I walk away from that conversation fearing, though, that I have lost my binary, you know, like a binary star system, where the whole is defined by the fact that there are TWO. It's been Nikki and me for more than two years now at Auburn, both together, neither of us actually orbiting the other, just tied together by our energy fields.

I don't know what to do, so I do the thing that will give me comfort. I walk through the back door of the Desai restaurant, through the storeroom and into the kitchen. It's an hour before lunch, so Grandma Desai is there orchestrating, chiding, directing, cajoling, rejecting and encouraging her mixed staff of cooks and chefs.

"Hello, my Chandra," she says when she sees me.

"Hi, Grandma," I said.

"My Chandra is worried."

"Yes, a little. Could we talk?"

She pulled me away into the office. I told her of my concern. She smiled.

"You are very special, Cindy. That is why – Chandra. I love my American family. I will make little sacrifice and prayer to Shiva." Her dark eyes twinkled. "Is Nikki. I will pour cream on lingam, too. Is she at home?"

"Right now," I said.

"Here. Take her this treat. Little gift for friend."

"Thank you, Grandma."

"Da-di. Grandma in Hindi."

"Thank you, Da-di. Namaste!"

I left. Knocked on Nikki's door.

"Here," I said, handing her the little box.

"What's this?"

"A gift for my binary."

"Oh, Cindy..."

I put my arms around her neck and hugged her.

"I know what a binary is. Two stars. Cindy, one star gets brighter sometimes. Next time it's the other star's turn." She opened the box. "Mmmm. I've HAD these. Grandma Desai. She doesn't sell them."

"I talked with her. She said you are my sister and you need a gift."

"She meant that YOU needed to give ... that is her gift. To both of us."

"She is making an offering to Shiva for you." I grinned. "And pouring cream on that lingam."

"Oh, lord," Nikki said. "We KNOW how that works."

Upside? I'm heading back from the lab, sitting beside Susan. My phone makes a 'bink' sound. Text from Dan. "Wanna play doctor?"

"That must've been a GOOD one, Cindy," Susan said. "You changed colors."

"My husband wishes to play 'doctor'."

Susan's got a delightful laugh. No wonder Jason adores her. "That's just cute. So he's okay with it?"

"Absolutely."

"Some guys would be all upset if the little wifey passes them up."