Chapter 41: Penguins Anonymous

April 11, 1988, Chicago, Illinois

Jessica, Kara, and I were standing outside the ER early on Monday morning.

"Ready to go back to work after your vacation?" I asked.

"Yes! I feel so much more relaxed and refreshed. Of course, by tomorrow morning, that will likely change."

"Just keep your eye on the end of May, Babe."

"June 10th — when I finish my last Board exam!"

"Have a good day!" I said.

"You, too! Are you going right to work?"

"Yes. Mine has been backing up, unlike yours!"

The three of us kissed, and Kara and I watched Jessica walk through the doors into the ER.

"It was a really good week, wasn't it?"

"Absolutely. It helped me as much as it helped her. Thanks for letting us spend time together."

"It was the right thing to do! It was really nice to stay in bed most of yesterday, too. And not just the sex!"

"I wanted to make sure that Jess got plenty of sleep after the services and the great party. We arrived home at 6:30am, so it made sense to nap for three or four hours before having lunch, and then relax in bed for the afternoon."

"Relax?" Kara giggled. "You weren't very relaxed when we were double-teaming you!"

"True!" I said with a laugh. "Though I'm guessing that was pretty much the last time you and I will have intercourse before the baby is born."

Kara laughed, "Listen to you! Jess is wearing off on you. Yes, that was the last time we'll FUCK before I have your baby!"

I chuckled, "I never used to like that word. Melanie liked to tease me about that. Things have changed."

"Of course, that doesn't mean I can't suck you!" she teased.

"Later!" I hissed as we came to the NIKA building.

"Are you planning to watch the race tonight?" Kara asked.

"Yes, we can fast-forward through commercials and cautions. And Jess won't be home, so she won't have to suffer through it!"

Kara laughed, "She loves you, despite your thing for cars going in circles! Do you plan to go to the park at lunch with Jesse today?"

I nodded, "Yes. Elyse and I are taking Jesse and Matthew as we usually do. I just hope Jesse doesn't decide to tell Carol that he's going to make a baby with Francesca!"

"Good luck with that!" Kara said, giving me a quick hug and kiss.

"See you later, Honey!" I said.

I stuck my access card into the slot next to the door and entered my code, then went inside and disarmed the alarm with my personal code. The new system had been installed the Wednesday of the week before my vacation, and I had to check the cheat sheet that I had in my wallet because I hadn't memorized the codes. I went to the small kitchen, started the coffee, then got my mail and messages from my slot in the wall-mounted mailboxes. While I had eight pink message slips, none were marked urgent. There were a couple of pieces of marketing mail, but nothing of importance. I filled my Pittsburgh Penguins mug and walked to my office.

I used my keycard to open my office door, then put a doorstop under the door to keep it open. In the middle of my desk was a red folder that had a small sheaf of papers in it. I sat down and opened it, and reviewed the documents. The first one was Dave's request to hire a technical writer who would double as a QA Engineer. I scribbled my initials on it and tossed it into the Outbox on the corner of my desk. The next document was Dave's request for another programmer, with a note that we'd fill it after interviewing graduates at IIT later in the month. I initialed it and it followed his first request into the Outbox.

The third document made me set my coffee down, and I reread it twice before I accepted what it said. It was a copy of a letter from Heather, resigning from NIKA. I flipped to the second sheet that was paper-clipped to it, and saw a short note from Dave saying that Heather was getting married and that her future husband had a new job in Denver, and that she was taking a job in Denver with a small consulting firm. Dave's note also said that he planned to replace her, but wanted to talk to me about it first. I set that paper aside.

The other two documents were the pipeline and financial reports from the previous Friday, but there was nothing out of the ordinary in them. Cindi's forecast had improved a bit, though sales were still weaker than we would have liked. All in all, things were OK. There was a note from Cindi attached to her report that said she'd had a good response to the first user group meeting. I filed those reports in my desk drawer, and then picked up the blue folder on my desk that contained my task list.

"Dear Bonehead," a note read. ", I'm not fixing THIS problem you created! Love, Penny!"

I laughed and looked at the bug report that Cassie had written out. I immediately knew what had happened. I'd been in a rush to get out of the office on the last Friday before my vacation and had merged a new module that I'd written into the development code without sufficiently testing it. It was now possible to record pregnancy data on men! And worse, when you went to a female patient's record, the option to bring up that screen wasn't available!

I quickly scanned through the other bug reports, change requests, and new feature requests, and saw nothing that leapt out. I turned on my computer and brought up my editor. I opened the code for the patient screen and staring right at me was the error. When checking whether or not the option should be displayed, I'd checked the flag in the opposite way from what I should have. I was displaying it when the flag was false instead of true. But then I wondered how I'd been able to test it Friday. That was a head scratcher.

I spent the next twenty minutes looking over the code and couldn't find the problem. Finally, I pulled up my test record, and I couldn't see the option. That made no sense at all. I looked at it for ten minutes and realized why Penny had called me a bonehead. The test record for Jane Doe had an 'M' in the sex field. I'd just looked at the name, and hadn't validated that the record was correct. I fixed Jane's sex to 'F' and the option displayed correctly. I documented what I'd done and signed the bug report sheet.

When Dave arrived, he came straight to my office.

"I thought about calling you when Heather handed me her resignation, but decided against it," he said. "Julia thought about it, too, but decided that it could wait."

"Did you try to talk her out of it?" I asked.

"How? Find her a new boyfriend?" he laughed. "We really can't afford to open another office, so I don't see what we can do."

"No, I suppose not," I said. "Her last day is April 29th, according to her letter. When is she getting married?"

"Sometime in June. Her boyfriend is in the Air Force and is assigned to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He lives somewhere between Denver and Colorado Springs, from what she said."

"Don't tell any of our Navy buddies; you know what they say about the Chair Force!" I chuckled.

"No kidding!" Dave said with a grin. "I was thinking of hiring a new grad to replace Heather. I think we should hire one from IIT, but for the other one, we should interview at UofC and Loyola as well. We may end up hiring two from IIT, but I want to see what else is out there from other programs."

"That makes sense. Did you talk to the other two schools about recruiting?"

"Yes. I assume it'll be you, me, and one of the other programmers, and it'll be between April 20th and 28th."

"That sounds good. Who did you have in mind?" I asked.

"Alonzo makes the most sense."

"I completely agree!"

"Once we make these hires, I'm going to split the team in two. Alonzo will lead the team that handles the Legal and Medical software. I'll lead the other one that's handling our other software packages and consulting until Tasha graduates, though during the Summer she'll have a chance to lead a team."

"Who will the tech writer report to?" I asked.

"Julia. She'll have technical documentation and QA as her other two groups besides development. I made the request because Alonzo identified the need and brought it to me."

"A new graduate?" I asked.

"Probably, but in liberal arts, probably with a minor in computers. Or with some self-taught computer skills. I talked to Julia about all of these, and we both think that financially, it makes more sense to hire new grads. They're cheaper, and they don't have baggage from some other job that we have to train out of them. Also, that lets us promote from within."

"Where does Greg fit in?" I asked.

"On the consulting side. He and Charlie are doing all the custom programming. Debbie also helps out on the days she's not working for Waukesha. That'll be a third group when we get more business. We do have quite a few inquiries in that area. They aren't really on Cindi's radar yet because Julia or I handle those inquiries."

"I had a message in my box from Viktor Bykov. Is there anything to worry about?"

"No. He just wanted to touch base. He'd like to have lunch with you sometime this week or next."

"OK. What about our favorite pain-in-the-ass customer?" I asked.

"Surprisingly calm. I figure it's the calm before the storm. You know there's always a storm with Dante."

"So true. Anything else I need to be aware of?"

"Not really. The staff meeting was last Monday, so there isn't one today. Also, remember, Bobby finishes his internship in two weeks."

"Do you have candidates for the Fall?" I asked.

"Doctor Bauer sent over a list. Are we still sponsoring Tasha?"

"Yes, absolutely. And we'll take one more. The same thing will happen for Penny's Senior year, but that's not for two more years."

"I take it you saw Penny's love note?" Dave grinned.

"I did. I was in such a rush to get out of here that day that I didn't pay close enough attention to what I was doing. I've fixed it already."

"Penny was laughing so hard she was almost in tears. She made sure everyone else knew about it, too."

"Oh, I'm sure she did! She can be a real brat at times!"

"She's your protégé, so you only have yourself to blame!"

"Don't I know it!" I chuckled.

Dave left, and I got back to work.

At the park, I was on pins and needles, but Jesse didn't say anything in front of Carol. I had no idea what he might have said to Francesca that could come back to haunt me, but it felt like I'd escaped when Elyse and I finally left to head back to the office.

"You can relax now," Elyse chuckled. "But if you get that tense every day, you're going to be a wreck. What happens, happens. If Carol gets mad, Jesse will find a new friend. He'll be upset, but he'll get over it. You're teaching him the right way. It's the same thing we'll do with Matthew when he gets older, and that you'll do with our second kid, and with your other kids."

I sighed, "I know. I just hate the fact that there are so many more people like my mom and Kent van der Meer than like us!"

"Then our job is to work on educating people. At least the ones around us. We could invite Carol and Stan for a sauna. You know, kind of ease them into our lifestyle."

"I'm not sure how well that will work, but sure, ask her. We can start out with the old weekend rules if need be."

We dropped the kids at home and then headed back to the office. That evening, Kara and I watched the tape of the Bristol race.

"Thirteenth," I said. "Which isn't a bad start for Bill on a short track like Bristol. He's one of the best on super speedways and his first Cup win on a road course, but he hasn't cracked the nut of short tracks."

"What's the difference that makes him not as good?" Kara asked.

"The Elliott brothers' cars have always been about speed and aerodynamics. Ernie builds great engines and they do a great job of setting up the cars for big tracks. The smaller ones need a very different chassis setup, and the engines and transmissions need to handle a very different kind of abuse. Then there are the inevitable incidents on short tracks. On a big track, if you're out front, where Bill runs a lot, the crash is behind you and you have as much as two miles before you come to it. At Bristol, where they're racing today, the track is only a half-mile, so no matter what, the wreck is close in front of you. Also, this track is cement, not asphalt, and that makes a big difference, too."

The green flag dropped and as the race progressed, Elliott floated up and down in the running order, but couldn't get to the front. Rick Wilson, who had won the pole, led the first 21 laps, then Earnhardt, Dave Marcis, Bobby Hillin, Jr., Earnhardt again, and Ricky Rudd led before Geoff Bodine led 68 laps to take the race past halfway. At lap 258 Harry Gant took over the lead and led a whopping 121 laps.

Bill had slowly worked his way to the front, and on lap 379, he got out front after Ricky Rudd wrecked in turn 4. Elliott, Geoff Bodine, and Mark Martin began to run away, and ended up lapping the rest of the field. Neither Bodine nor Martin could pass Elliott and he looked strong.

"No!" I screamed as Bodine hit Elliott from behind, spinning him in Turn 3.

"Did he just run into him on purpose?" Kara asked.

"Hard to say," I said. "Bodine is an idiot, but that looked like regular Bristol racing. You've seen them bump and shove each other around. They're only running 90MPH, so that's possible. If you did that at Daytona, you could turn someone head-on into the wall and kill them."

"I guess his chances of winning are gone now," Kara said.

"Probably, but there were only three cars on the lead lap, and he didn't hit the wall or another car. He'll start 3rd, but, and this is key, he can safely pit to get fresh tires now. That'll give him a slight advantage if neither Martin nor Bodine pit. Bodine is leading and they'll probably only have 4 or 5 laps left when the caution ends. He can't stop, because that would let Martin stay on the track. New tires aren't enough for Bodine to take the risk."

When the green flag dropped with 4 laps to go, Elliott powered right past Bodine, and Martin, who had also pitted, followed him by.

"Yes!" I screamed as Bill held the lead with 3 laps to go.

Try as he might, Martin couldn't pass Bill and when the checkered flag dropped, Bill Elliott had won his first short-track race.

"Hot damn!" I exclaimed.

"I warned you not to be such a Debbie Downer!" Kara laughed.

"Let's see where the points stand. He should gain quite a bit, with Bonnett and Earnhardt finishing a few laps down."

After ESPN ran through the complete finishing order, they put up the points standings. Earnhardt was in the lead, but just seven points ahead of Marlin; and sixteen ahead of Bonnett. Bill was now in fourth place, only 24 points back.

"Now THAT is what I wanted to see!" I said.

"More than seeing Fawn naked?" she teased.

I decided to play along a bit.

"Well, now that you mention it..." I said soberly. "I'd love to. I bet she'd taste sweet! And she'd do ANYTHING I asked."

Kara started laughing, "So you WOULD!"

"Honey, some fantasies are meant to be nothing more than fantasies. Miss Fawn Barton will never know the thoughts that just ran through my mind."

"No, but perhaps you'd run through me a few times!" she said, her fingers toying with the buttons on my shirt.

"I thought that was off limits?"

"Maybe this one time. Gently."

"I think I can manage that," I said.

April 14, 1988, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

"«Привет», Viktor Vladimirovich," I said when he greeted me at Belarus Tractor very late on Thursday morning. ("Hello")

He smiled, "Hello, Stephen Rayevich! Are you ready for lunch?"

"Yes, of course!"

We left the building and got into his car, and he drove us to a small building that had a sign in Russian.

"A Russian Tea Room," he said. "They serve food, too."

"Perfect!" I said.

We went inside and were quickly seated after Viktor spoke in Russian to the hostess. Tea was brought to the table, and poured into glasses in silver holders, like the ones I had at home. I scanned the menu and ordered what was called in English 'Russian Stew'.