Chapter 95: New Candidates For The Family. Trouble in Vegas

Mark

Tom sat in a relaxed position on my sofa next to Mel and Andy. I sat in my usual casual chair on the other side of the coffee table. We’d been talking for the past half-hour about the Gigabit Cellular Technology program Tom had taken over and beefed it up to where large strides were being made almost daily in getting things to market.

Tom said, “The big accomplishment over the past month was to complete the patent applications on GCT. There are two-dozen separate elements that we’ve applied for. We don’t think anybody has anything like it. We submitted the applications to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s fast track program. With some luck we’ll have the patents issued in about eleven months instead of three years. They are so slow, even with the extra payment for a fast track. We included copies of our laboratory notebooks with the applications to prove the authenticity of our application claims, and we included some of the prototype test results.”

Melanie leaned in, “But the best news is that Tom knows someone at the Federal Communications Commission. He showed them some of the prototype results and they are over the moon about the whole concept. They are pressuring the USPTO for immediate action, AND they want broader tests as soon as possible in both a major metropolitan area, such as the city, and a rural area. They’re almost pressuring us to move faster.”

Tom chuckled, “I was thinking of the city as one test bed, and St. Croix for the rural area test bed. The island has good cellphone coverage but their Internet speeds suck. I think the best they have is DSL, and that peaks out at just over a megabit per second. We’ll be offering the island something a thousand times faster without needing to lay fiber, although the two large towns have some dark fiber underground as of a decade or so ago.”

I probed, “How’s the budget?”

Tom said, “We’ve spent about ten million of your twenty, and I think we’re ahead of schedule and certainly my initial expectations. We could start on the city trial tomorrow if we can get Verizon to go along with us. An outfit called Broadband Caribb serves the island. To be honest we don’t know much about them, but they do seem to have some kind of a program to fire up the fiber in parts of the two metro areas on the island. They’re aiming at businesses right now for anything close to what we could offer in terms of speed, so they’re only focused on Christiansted and Fredericksted.”

“Do we want to become a provider for the island?”

Tom made a face. “No. There’s not enough margin to be made and we’d be the focus for a million customer complaints. We don’t want to deal with that end of things any more than we already do. I want to try working through the provider that’s already up and running. They’ve already got the infrastructure in place; we just piggyback on it.”

I stood, “OK, I’m happy.”

Izzy appeared in my office doorway, “Sorry to interrupt, but you have a conference call with our Swedish manufacturing plant scheduled in ten minutes.” She looked hopefully at me to be sure I remembered the purpose of the call.

I asked Izzy, “Is Sheila joining us?”

“She’s already in the teleconference room talking to her counterpart over there. As soon as you appear the others will be there in seconds and the main purpose of the meeting can get underway.”

The others stood and we parted ways. Tom said as he was leaving, “See you later for a ride home. Remember?”

Melanie stepped in, “I won’t let him forget. See you at six-thirty.”

Getting off the elevator at home a few hours later I got immediately greeted by Stacy. She rushed into my arms with a bucket load of kisses.

She immediately informed me, as someone often did, of the whereabouts of those not visible in the room. “Elsa and Julie are with the babies; they’ll be out soon. Cindy is working late and said not to wait dinner on her. KC is working at the gallery and won’t make dinner. Marcia is on the west coast, as you know. Alice is seeing a client until nine o’clock. Deke is trying to finish up a wiring job in Hyattsville. Carter will be here in about thirty minutes, and everybody else is here.” She gestured into the living room where the rest of the family sat around.

As I pondered what I wanted to do about dinner, Stacy greeted Tom, Sheila, Melanie, and Izzy. As I glanced around I noted two faces I didn’t see all the time. June Mayer, KC’s sister, was chatting with Mike, and next to them in a separate conversation sat Kate Kenworthy and James. Elsa had cued me in that both June and Kate wanted to join the circle. Working at the dining room table I saw Tori, Kate’s teenage daughter, but she had her head into some serious homework assignment so hadn’t registered our arrival. I held back an opinion when she told me about June and Kate, since I felt I might have too much influence on the outcome and I really wanted it to be a family decision. Secretly, I loved the idea of Kate joining us, but I didn’t know June all that well.

June and Kate saw me and both excused themselves and came over and gave me welcome home kisses. I effused over the two of them, commenting that I was surprised to see Kate since I knew she had to work at Club Infinity that evening. She explained that she was headed over there after the dinner she’d been invited to. She laughed and jested, “I guess that’s if you approve the invitation that Elsa made.” She glanced over at her daughter and added, “I come with a trailing daughter too.”

“Oh, I most certainly approve. I am hungry. How about we go down the street to our little French restaurant?”

Several heads nodded and there was some moving around in the room until we were all ready to head out as a group. Just as we were about to leave Elsa and Julie appeared.

Elsa was carrying Philip Emerson, who saw me and instantly started to babble about ‘Da da. Da da. Da da.” Elsa came and kissed me, “Hello, Da da. The two of us are going to dinner too. No one wanted to cook.”

Julie kissed me as she passed by, but then passed off a baby to Sheila, and then went and really laid a long succulent kiss on Tom. They nuzzled into each other in a way I hadn’t noticed before, and I also saw some intimate whispering going on – little love words between the two of them.

Sheila carried Patricia as we headed out. Patricia was Alice and Deke’s baby. A couple of people in the family had taken to calling the baby ‘PT’ but no one else had latched onto that moniker yet except the baby who seemed to know when people were talking about her.

June relieved Julie of KC and Mike’s baby Jenny, cuddling and cooing into her niece as we strolled along in the early evening hours the one block to the restaurant. Despite the winter temperatures, the evening was relatively mild and windless. I watched June carefully, and saw that she was just oozing love for the infant, showering the baby with hugs and kisses despite the minimal feedback babies of that age provided in return.

As I looked around, I noted that Julie had walked hugging Tom’s arm to her as the pair continued to talk with each other about their day. He looked pleased as Punch with her attention and I guessed that they’d couple up later that night. They’d been doing a lot of that since they met. I walked along with Elsa and Philip Emerson in my arms. We also chatted about our days and some plans for the weekend.

We were met by the grand-mère of the family that ran the restaurant. She escorted us to our dinner nook, got a high chair for Philip Emerson, and then sat with us and cooed over the babies while we ordered dinner and drinks from her son.

I’d bought the restaurant the Cadillac of high chairs since we were there so much and Philip had outgrown his baby carrier. A couple of the guys had lugged along two of the baby carriers to put PT and Jenny in. Both infants had fallen asleep during the short walk and didn’t wake up when put in the carriers. Philip looked on a sugar high, and wanted to simultaneously join in all the conversations going on around him, so he proved to be noisy the entire meal. Elsa assured me that his behavior was the tip of an iceberg. As she said, “He hasn’t learned to ask ‘Why?’ about everything, but he will.”

In a way, my son’s animation was good because he would probably sleep through the night once we got him changed and put to bed. In turn, Elsa and I would get a good night’s sleep as well the others who chose to be in our bed, although Elsa or I were the ones who got up at night to deal with Philip Emerson.

As dinner ended, I saw our waiter bring June a large takeout bag. She picked up Little PT, and then was struggling to carry the bag as well. I went over and relieved her of the bag. “Let me help. What’s in here, leftovers?”

“Oh, no. Those are dinners for Alice, Cindy, KC, and Deke. Thank you.”

“That was nice of you to pick up their dinners for them.”

“They don’t know it yet, but I guessed they’d want something when they each got home after a long day. Thank you for buying dinner for all of us. Sometimes I think we forget to be grateful for what you do for us, especially us outsiders.”

“Walk with me, and tell me about June.” I referred to her in the third person but she smiled at my interest in her.

‘I’m pretty simple in a way. Just turned twenty-three, two years out of college, business and accounting major, and now working for as an accountant for a construction company.”

“KC alluded to your being wild growing up. Any truth to those rumors?” I grinned at her as I baited the hook. I’d actually heard a couple of stories, including several about how June had turned her life around.

June sheepishly admitted, “Yeah, I was pretty rebellious once I got into my teens. I drove mom and dad nuts, and I think I spent about two-thirds of my teenage years grounded. In the other third I was doing things to get me grounded again. I partied too hard, drank too much, smoked too much weed, and had a reputation as being easy – and I was. I started to clean up my act about halfway through college. I didn’t like the trajectory I was on, so I made a new one. I’m more mature now, but I still like a few of those things.” She gave me a sideways glance and grin.

“And you’ve decided that we’re on the same path you want to be on?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to see how she fielded that statement.

“Yeah. If I’m not with you and your family, I feel lonely and like I’m not where I think I should be. I love your family, and I hope to find something like it ... and nearby too, because I’ve reestablished my relationship with KC and I think I’m more or less forgiven by our parents. I’d burnt a lot of bridges with KC as I grew up, now I’m working to repair that infrastructure. I’m in love with my older sister and just full of respect for her, her talent as an artist, and grateful for all the things she did to try to keep me out of trouble. I couldn’t see it at the time, but she was always on my side; she had much more of an adult perspective than I had, even up until only a few years ago. I’m still growing. Oh, and now she’s a mom, and I’m an aunt. I have to be a good role model for my niece.” She rocked little PT in her arms. The baby made happy gurgling sounds.

“KC made me realize that I’m loaded with love for people. I want to help them in so many ways. Further, the more I get to know everyone here, the more I feel comfortable that this setting is my home for the future. I get good vibes here, and I hopefully reflect those back to the people in your family in mind, body, and spirit.

I probed, “What made you say that – mind, body, and spirit?”

June was a little nonplused by my question. “Errr, well, people in your family talk about substantive things and they read, they enrich their minds and help each other do the same. Even though I hadn’t read the book, for instance, I sat in when two of the guys and two of the women talked about a book they’d just read on climate concerns.

“I feel comfortable here regardless of what I wear, but I do try to look sharp for everyone. I want people to appreciate my body without it getting in the way of other feelings or emotions. Since you have a nice cross-section of body types in the family, no one feels out of place. Everyone is pretty good-looking, and I hope I measure up.

“Lastly, I feel a spiritual connection with people here. We haven’t talked a lot about it with each other, but there’s a deeper connection with the others than just superficial talk or conversation, even when that’s enriched in some way. Sheila explained to me about soul groups a week ago, and while I’m not sure I buy into that idea completely, I feel like there’s a larger, deeper, and more important connection with everyone here.”

I nodded, “Well put. Who have you been physical with?”

June shook her head, “No one in the family – yet. I don’t want to cloud people’s judgment of me because of what I do or don’t do sexually with some of you. The idea of a physical connection with everyone is highly arousing and exceptionally appealing, but ... it seems premature. I’m not trying to fuck my way into the family. If the family wants to embrace me, I want it to be because I’m more than a hot fuck – which, by the way, I believe I am.” I got a goofy grin from her followed by a long laugh. Her response made me laugh as well.

Elsa

When we got back to the condominium from dinner, Deke had just gotten out of the shower after a late arrival home from a job he was doing for his new security business. He came into the kitchen in a terry cloth bathrobe rubbing a towel through his wet hair, and looking in the refrigerator at the leftover situation.

June passed off PT to her sister who’d also come home from the gallery, and rushed to get Deke a dinner from the take home food she’d procured at the restaurant. Deke gave her a big hug and kiss and vocalized his gratitude to her. June sat with KC and him while they ate, and vocalized their gratitude for June getting them a regular dinner.

I did a little evaluation of June. Was she sucking up or was this her nature? I decided based on her attitude and the parts of the conversation I overheard, that this was genuinely her helpful and harmonious nature. I’d seen it in how she interacted with the children too.

Tom disappeared for a few minutes to change out of his business suit. He was living in one of the guest bedrooms on the twenty-ninth floor until he had his own place to live, hopefully taking over the twenty-eighth floor as the current residents sold the condominium unit to him.