Chapter 21

Cindy's turn:

It hits me sometimes. I'm supposed to be halfway through high school. I'm going to turn sixteen and I'm sitting in front of a monitor reading a specification document on some equipment for a utility company substation. I suppose that other girls my age are NOT doing this. Honestly, I don't know what they're doing. I'm not worrying about boys, for darned sure. Across the room, if I give my chair a hard push, I can hit him, is my husband. He's mine. I'm his.

It's like that because WE want it like that. I've been to college and I got hit on plenty of times, ring or no ring, so it's not like I'm with Dan because I'm hopelessly homely or something.

And Dan ... We've been to enough places to know that I'm not the only one that finds the guy attractive. Oh, he blows my skirt up. Always has. I've seen women closer to HIS age sliding up next to him. It's funny. Dan's a nice guy and he likes to talk to people, but I can see a predatory twinkle from a mile away. So can he. Sometimes I'll slide up next to him when he's talking. That usually derails a woman's thoughts that MY Dan might be an easy target.

And he talks soooo sexy at work.

I asked, "They specified dual trip coils? This is distribution." I was learning so much so fast.

"This feeder goes to a hospital. It's a good place to overprotect."

Like I said. "You're sexy when you talk technical," I laughed.

"Y'all stoppit!" Susan's voice came up the hall.

"Ignore her, baby," I giggled. "She's pregnant. Hormones are all off kilter."

"I will be sooooo glad when we hire an HR person so I can file a complaint about this hostile work environment. Jason's coming home this evening an' I'm tellin'," she squealed.

"You could've gone with 'im," Dan said.

"Couldn't. Doctor's appointment, okay?"

"Yeah. That's right," Dan said. "Go with 'im next time. Clients keep asking about you."

He turned to me. "Word is that 3Sigma has the prettiest female engineers in the business." He laughed. "They might not be able to identify me or Jason out of a line-up, but they darned sure ask about Susan and Tina and Cindy and Nikki."

"I could be stackin' panties at the big Wal-Mart," I said.

"Uh, no," he answered. "You'd at least be in pre-law. Probably engineering."

"But I could go through the panties and pick the good ones..."

"Watch it, buster!" I giggled. "Four o'clock's coming." I pulled up the calendar and put a black block in for Dan and Cindy. An hour. No, make that an hour and a half. Then dinner. We'd work up an appetite.

"Ummmmm!" squealed Susan. "I see what YOU did, Cindy Sue!"

"Don't give me any static," I said. "YOU have the whole evening blocked off."

"Jason's been out of town," she laughed back at me.

We get just a tiny bit racy when the Munchkin Mafia's out of range and no clients are around. New building. Our own hallway. Sort of private.

Work's good. I never imagined a place that made money like this, not when I was thirteen, when I met Dan. Not when I was fourteen and I married him. Now, though...

Susan and Kim and I are visiting a client's substation. The work – OUR work – is in progress. We're building from scratch right next to the old substation. Some of the equipment in there has nameplates from the 1950s. Still works. Just that stuff that was fast enough in 1955 isn't fast enough in 2015. You could blink the lights in 1955 and people would be like, 'Oh, well. ' You do that today, systems trip off line. Clocks start flashing. People lose data. Horrible.

Mister Bill's NOT there. He and Mom are gallivanting at some far-ranging job over in Georgia, and the guy who's leading this job is somebody that Mister Bill recommended.

He sees Susan's SUV pull into the parking next to the construction site. Susan's a little careful about her new SUV. I like it. Big enough for four of us to go out on a job. Room to carry stuff. Susan says 'baby-friendly'.

He's a big guy, fifty-ish. Probably fifty pounds overweight. Arms like a weightlifter, though. Round, red face and a walrus mustache and blue eyes. Looks like something that came screaming out of the Highlands swinging a claymore. Goes with his name, Angus McTavish.

"Hi, Mister Angus," Susan says.

"Good morning, Susan. Cindy. And who's this?" (In pure Southern dialect, natch!)

He hasn't met Kim.

"Kimberly Duncan, sir," Kim says, offering her hand.

He shook it. "Please tell me you're somebody's daughter..."

"Mister Angus," I said, "you know better. Kim's ... Well, it started with 'er marrying an engineer..."

He shook his head. Took his hard hat off. "Cindy Richards, I don't want you to bring another one to my site unless you pull her from the second shift at Burger King..."

By this time, one of the other guys on the job figured out an excuse to come see us.

"Greg," I said. "When are you starting night school?"

"Got my books. Next week. Homework. You promised..."

"We're here for you. Might turn you over to Terri..."

"The little blonde girl with the robot?"

"Her."

"I don't know what's gonna get me killed first – the wife findin' me Skypin' one of you, or finding out that a ten year old is tutoring me."

"I know it's a drive, Greg. Bring 'er over on a Saturday. Food. Music. Let 'er meet people," I said, giggling.

Susan added, "And bring the baby. Me 'n' Tina need the experience."

He laughed. "If you want experience, we'll leave the little booger with you for a week."

"Your wife won't do that, Greg, and YOU know it," Susan giggled.

"We'll call before we show up," he laughed. He turned and left.

"Okay, Mister Angus," I said. "Here're the corrected drawings. Gas line. Who knew?"

"Not the gas company, for sure," he said. "We did the call. Had everybody sign off on the excavations. Good thing Greg pays attention on that trackhoe. We coulda made the six o'clock news if that pipe had ruptured. It's supposed to be a hundred yards further west."

"Well," I said. "It's gonna be abandoned. The gas company's starting Monday. They'll cut it loose from the main line and just leave the pipe in the ground. Used to go to a sawmill over on the other side of the tracks."

I handed him the prints.

"Now," Susan said, "Do you mind if we show Kim around the place? She needs to see this stuff from the ground up."

"You're SERIOUS! She really IS another one of you?"

Kim grinned. "I run with the wrong kind of people, Mister Angus."

"Yeah, it's a bad crowd. You got your hardhat, I see."

"Yessir. Safety shoes, too."

"Y'all go look around. Susan, don't wiggle when you walk. Last time you came through here you stopped work for two hours..."

"I DIDN'T!" Susan squealed.

Kim's head swiveled from side to side, taking in all the work. We're still at the foundation stage – holes in the ground, interesting arrangements of steel bars making surrealistic cages.

"Rebar," Kim said. "Reinforcement bar. I didn't know there was so much, though."

"You should've seen the pump bases at that powerhouse by where we used to live. You almost couldn't drop a tennis ball through it, and they were six feet tall."

I have a picture of me standing on top of one of those things when they took the forms off. It's part of the project book there. Color me proud. So was Dan when he took it.

We walked around watching the crew installing the ground grid, too. I recognized another worker.

"Deesy, are you ready to do any of the welds?"

"Was gonna start at the other end, tomorrow. Why?"

"Was hoping that Kim could see one done."

"Hey, Jumbo," he called.

'Jumbo' stood up in the trench. He was just about my size, a runt for a construction worker. That means that somewhere they have a three hundred fifty pound, six-five guy named 'Tiny'.

"Yah, boss?"

"Kim wants to see a cadweld shot. Can you go do one for 'er?"

Jumbo climbed out of the trench. "For this bunch I'd wrassle a bear in my skivvies."

Kim's nose crinkled. "How'd a bear get in your skivvies?"

Deesy shook his head. Jumbo was temporarily speechless.

Kim got to watch her cadweld shot.

"Exothermic reaction," Jumbo said. "Like thermite, except classic thermite is iron-based. This is copper. Welds those cables together forever."

"Why don't you use those clamps?" Kim said. "Like ... I don't see any..."

"I know what you mean," Jumbo said. "Clamps work loose. This stuff gets hot, then it gets cold..."

"Thermal cycling," Kim said.

He looked at her, his sun-browned face crinkling with the smile. "Yeah, that's right, thermal cycling. But clamps get loose, and this ground grid is going to be buried where nobody'd know it, so we weld. There are some new mechanical connections, but they require a special tool. We don't do that. And we clamp 'em here with those clamps so they can take the connection apart for testing," he said. "Test well."

We walked away.

"You'd think that a construction worker named 'Jumbo' wouldn't be that well informed," Kim said.

"Get used to it," Susan answered. "Some are very well versed in their crafts. Mister Angus hires good ones."

We got in the car. Kim was giggling.

"Whaa-aat?" Susan asked.

"'Don't wiggle when you walk through a construction site.' I gotta remember that one. It's classic," Kimberly giggled.

"Yeah, Susan walks through, guys throw their shovels down, bang their heads against the I-beams. I walk through, everybody wants to be my grandpa..."

"Oh, bull. What about that booth babe? The one that accused you of unfair competition?"

"What about that?" Kim asked. "I haven't heard that one."

"You know about booth babes, huh?" Susan asked.

"Oh yeah. Been to a couple of trade shows."

Susan kept on. "We don't hire booth babes. One show, Cindy and Nikki were there at the booth. A slinky blonde certified booth babe came over, asked Cindy which agency she worked for, said that the 'nerd girl' look was a neat angle and the red hair was gonna put 'er out of business."

"Nooo."

"Ah, yes ... I am Cindy the Nerd Girl."

"We are, you know," Kim said. "There's a certain segment of manhood that finds us exciting."

Giggle. "I know. I married 'im," I said.

"Me too," Susan said.

"You. You don't get to be a nerd girl, Susan. You're a classic beauty."

"Awwwww, thanks..."

"And that's a typical construction site, Kim," I said. "It changes from day to day as things get installed. And the people there? Mister Bill gets us some good superintendents and for the most part the construction workers are competent, but remember – men. Some of them aren't particularly couth. If hearing 'motherfucker' gives you the vapors, then construction sites are not where you wanna be."

"I've heard the word," Kim said. "Under some certain circumstances, I might have used it."

"Well, I guess I have, too, but never in front of strangers. I know of some women on construction sites that try to match men like that."

"That's disgusting," Kim said.

"Act like a lady, get treated like a lady. First, I am THE engineer. As much as some guys might want to laugh and cut up about it, I'm still the engineer, and that's a status, but I never act like a know-it-all. It's too easy to run into a guy who not only KNOWS a lot, but has DONE it with his own hands. We work together."

"Ever get any – you know – comments?" Kim asked.