Chapter 72: An Explosive Discovery

April 3, 1997, Dallas, Texas

“Remember what I said about drinking too much,” I said, as I poured bourbon into three cups.

We’d stopped at a liquor store, bought a bottle of Blanton’s, and then returned to the small suite I’d reserved at the Westin. Deborah’s room was down the hall, and Krissy’s was two floors below. Krissy’s comment had caught me a bit off guard, but I hadn’t reacted visibly. I didn’t know her quite well enough to know if she’d been teasing with Deborah, so I was being extra careful. Nothing more had been said, and we’d decided to use my larger room to hang out.

“I see rank has privileges,” Krissy said, indicating the room with a sweep of her hand.

“I travel enough that I get upgraded pretty much wherever I go. If this were an InterContinental, I’d have an even larger room, a basket of fruit, a bottle of wine or champagne, and other stuff. Being in their Six Continents Club and staying thirty nights a year gets me all kinds of perks. Add in what our travel agent does, and it’s even better. We flew first class on coach tickets because of free upgrades.”

“You have an office here in Dallas, right?”

“Yes. Deborah and I are going there after we leave the attorney’s office tomorrow. Then we’ll fly home late in the afternoon. When do you fly home?”

“Early evening - the last session of my training doesn’t end until 4:30pm, so I scheduled a 7:30pm flight home. Can we go back to our earlier conversation?”

“Mind-blowing orgasms?” I smirked.

“Before that! You said I could ask anything, so I’m curious, do your wives have boyfriends?”

“No. But that’s by their own choice. Kara flirts up a storm with one of my best friends, but nothing will ever happen. Not because it would bother me, but because she doesn’t want to take it that far.”

“Why?”

“For Kara, it goes back to her belief, growing up, that you should only ever be with one guy. She doesn’t apply that standard to anyone else, only to herself. For Jessica, it’s because with the exception of a very close friend of ours who was killed by a drunk driver, nobody but me has been worthy of what she has to offer.”

“Oh, please! Nobody is THAT special!”

“She’s a trauma surgeon.”

“Never mind. Doctors don’t count as people!”

I laughed hard for a good minute before I could respond.

“Let me guess, they’re giving your profession a hard time because of the whole ‘doctor’ thing.”

“Shocking, I know,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “The AMA is fighting us the same way they’re fighting nurse practitioners and midwives.”

“My wife thinks the AMA is full of shit on that one. Of course, the number of non-emergent cases they have to treat might have something to do with it. She’s all for anything that will reduce the increasing use of the Emergency Room for non-emergent cases - clinics, nurse practitioners, midwives, and so on. With regard to midwives, she feels the hospital is the WORST place to bring mothers and newborns! And if you think about it, she’s right.”

“That’s another one of those things that changed in the last fifty years,” Deborah said. “The institutionalization of childbirth. Most women do not need to deliver in a hospital or have a doctor in attendance.”

“A friend of mine is looking at a project to create a birthing center which would be attached to a hospital but not directly part of it. She’s thinking a completely separate building on the same campus, so you have a full ER and intensive care if you need them, but most women check in similar to a hotel, have their baby, and check out the next morning. They’d be attended by midwives and supervised by an Attending physician assisted by a Resident. Of course, in its infinite wisdom, Illinois made midwifery illegal, so she has to fight that, too.”

“That’s just fucked up,” Krissy said. “I know infant mortality went down with institutionalized childbirth, but once the doctors got control over it, it became expensive and overly clinical. I’m not a mom, but I can’t think of something more important than childbirth, and the idea of giving birth in a hospital just rubs me the wrong way.”

“So long as Deborah rubs you the right way!” I grinned.

“Why do you always use her formal name?”

“Because that’s how she introduced herself, and she never told me to call her anything else.”

“I go by ‘Deborah’ professionally,” Deborah said. “It just sounds better than ‘Deb’ or ‘Debbie’.”

“What about Krissy?” I asked.

She smiled, “In athletics, that works better than Kristiana, which is my given name.”

“Norwegian heritage?” I asked.

“Blonde hair and blue eyes gave it away?”

“Partly. Having lived in Sweden, it just felt Norwegian. And I also remember that Oslo, the capital of Norway, was named Kristiania from 1877 to 1925, after King Christian IV.”

“OK, that’s just creepy how you can pull that information out of thin air.”

“He does that all the time,” Deborah said. “The one nice thing about Steve is if you explain something to him, he gets it and remembers it.”

“I have a lengthy list of females, starting from when I was about fourteen, who would vehemently disagree with you, including the one you teased about not being smart!”

“I do believe that’s the first time anyone has ever said ‘Die, bitch!’ to me!”

“That’s just Penny’s way of saying ‘I love you’!” I countered.

“You keep telling yourself that!”

“Penny is actually very sweet; she’s just also very volatile. That had its advantages when she was fifteen!”

“Bragging about your conquests?” Krissy asked.

I shook my head, “Penny is very vocal about our past relationship. She and her husband and kids live next door to us in her parents’ house. Terry, her husband, and I are good friends. Penny isn’t shy about telling anyone about what happened before she worked for me when she was in High School and I was in college.”

“So it’s not that big of an age difference, really.”

“No. She’s six years younger. And she’ll also tell you she chased me, not the other way around.”

“She does say that,” Deborah confirmed.

“Does everyone around you reject social convention?”

I shook my head, “Not at all, though nearly everyone has a ‘live and let live’ attitude. Certainly everyone at NIKA does, because without it, they wouldn’t fit in.”

“So you have to all be in agreement to be different?” Krissy asked.

“Something like that,” I grinned. “We’re all individuals together, if that makes sense.”

“In the rift in the space-time continuum I seemed to have stepped through when Deborah came to work for you, it does.”

“The ‘Steve Adams Reality Distortion Field’,” Deborah said. “Or as one of his friends coined it, Cirque du Steve.”

“So neither of your wives have been with anyone else?”

“Besides each other?” I smirked.

“I didn’t catch that before. So they make love to each other? Without you around?”

I nodded, “They do a lot more cuddling and kissing than actual sex, but yes, on occasion, they make love to each other without my participation. When I am there, we all make love together in just about every configuration you can imagine.”

“I have a pretty good imagination!” Krissy replied.

“Good luck thinking of ANYTHING we don’t do that’s not an extreme fetish.”

“OK. I have to ask a question that might be completely out of line.”

“Pegging? Yes.”

“Seriously?! You’re straight!”

“Let’s just say that I do things which don’t necessarily excite me because they excite my wives. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. And just to complete the picture, a girl first put a vibrator in my butt when I was seventeen.”

“How old were you your first time?”

“Fourteen, and not by much.”

“Classmate? Neighbor?”

“Widow,” I grinned.

“How old?”

“Twenty-three.”

“So you had a good teacher?”

“Between her and a girl I hung out with that Summer, I got quite the education. By the time I graduated High School I’d done pretty much everything you can think of that straight guys can do with one or more girls.”

“Where the heck did you go to school?”

“Milford, Ohio. It seems to have been an outlier amongst even sex-crazed schools!”

“So how did you and the widow get together, if I may ask?”

“You may. She went to the same church I did, and she thought I was several years older. My mom offered me to do yard work for her, and one thing led to another.”

“You got to work in her garden?” Krissy asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” I replied with a grin.

“Did she know you were fourteen?”

“Not at first, but before we went to bed. She was conflicted, but decided she wanted to do it anyway. But she broke it off within a few weeks because she was very smart.”

“Oh?”

“I was developing feelings for her and there was just no way that could work. My mom wigged out when, a few years later, she became very suspicious because I walked that woman down the aisle for her wedding to her current husband.”

“That is a bit strange.”

“She had no male relatives who could walk her down the aisle, so she asked me. And that was a fateful wedding, because that’s when I met Elyse, the mother to two of my boys.”

“How old were you?”

“I’d just turned sixteen the month before the wedding. That was right before I went to Sweden as an exchange student.”

“Was that fun?”

“I really enjoyed it.”

“Endless blondes?”

“My main girlfriend for the entire year was a brunette.”

“Do you do ANYTHING conventionally?”

“Not much, really. I take it Deborah has told you how I run NIKA.”

“She has. It sounds like a place I’d like to work, but I don’t exactly have the qualifications.”

“Intelligence, a strong work ethic, and a belief in the team over the individual? Sure you do!”

“You are VERY confusing, do you realize that?”

“Because I am a firm believer in individualism but appear to insist on collectivism at work?”

“And you’re an extreme capitalist but are very socialist in the way you handle pay and benefits.”

“The latter is easy - it’s voluntary and I believe it’s in my best interest to treat my employees and customers well. I believe, in the end, that by sharing the wealth, I’ll make even more money than if I behaved like my nemesis, Dante.”

“Deborah has told me about him. You should have had him castrated when he was harassing your female staff.”

“There were several volunteers, including Penny!”

“And the collectivism?”

“Can you be fully supportive of America and work for her success without being a zombie clone of every other American?”

“Sure. But politics is messy and getting messier.”

“For the first time tonight, you’ve disappointed me,” I said.

“Why?”

“Read up on political campaigns and activities in the past. You can start with the Wide Awakes, a progressive, paramilitary organization that supported Abraham Lincoln.”

“Lincoln was a Republican!”

“And Republicans were progressives then. Democrats were conservatives. Here’s a fun fact - when FDR ran against Hoover, FDR was the one for LESS government intervention compared to Hoover.”

“No way!”

“Things they don’t teach you in history class,” I replied, shaking my head. “During the campaign. FDR attacked Hoover for protectionism, increasing taxes, and being ‘the greatest spending Administration in peacetime in all our history‘. FDR wasn’t thinking ‘New Deal’ at that point, but he did have a reputation as governor of New York of trying to help those hardest hit by the deepening depression. What happened after the election is different, but that was the case in 1932.”

“You’re serious about not needing experience to work for you?”

“One of my regional directors, a Vice President, was selling stereo equipment when I hired him as a field support engineer. Well, we didn’t call it by that name back then, but that was the job he did. My executive assistant was a part-time secretary when I hired her as our receptionist.”

“And by ‘executive assistant’,” Deborah added, “he means the person who basically is our Chief Operating Officer.”

“If I ever get frustrated with working with college athletes on rehab, I’ll call!”

“And we’ll be happy to talk to you. We hire only very smart, open-minded people with a strong work ethic and a dedication to excellence.”

“But what about computer skills; you know, programming or whatever?”

I smiled, “I can teach people to program or fix computers a heck of a lot easier than I can teach them to think! Honestly, there is nothing magical about computer skills. For most people, it’s either a mental block or poor teachers. That said, not everyone is going to be good at programming even if they know how. But programming jobs make up less than a quarter of our staff. We have lots of other roles, both technical and non-technical. When we hire, we look for well-rounded individuals. I’d rather have a graduate with a 3.2 average and a bunch of hobbies and activities than a nerd with a 4.0 who never takes his face out of his books.”

“Because they’ll have trouble being team players.”

“That’s a big part of it, yes.”

“Just don’t mention participation trophies,” Deborah teased.

“Ask Jesse about those!” I grinned. “He refused to accept one and convinced the rest of his team to do the same.”

“You’re not part of the ‘self-esteem’ crowd, I see,” Krissy observed.

“Oh, I am. But you find your character and self-esteem in how you deal with setbacks. Life has no guarantees of any kind, and if you don’t learn how to deal with adversity and losing when you’re young, you’ll turn into an adult who always expects to be rewarded even when you fail. Think about how THAT will play out!”

“Either this bourbon is way stronger than I thought, or he’s actually making sense!” Krissy declared.

“Let me ask you this,” I said with a sly grin, “if you’re with a guy or girl who doesn’t bring you to orgasm, are you going to tell them ‘Great job! You tried!’ and keep doing it with them, without any expectation of ever having an orgasm?”

“An interesting analogy. You’re that good, are you?”

I shrugged, “I make no claims in that regard. What I’m saying is that if I’m not, would you just accept it and keep doing it?”

“Probably not.”

“And to put a finer point on it, can you clear a player to return to the team simply because he tries, even if he’s not healed properly?”

“I’d lose my job and probably my license.”

“Exactly. The idea is completely foolish, because I could make the argument that if I show up at the United Center, I can demand to play for the Blackhawks because I’ll try really hard. It’s absurd. I get that in developmental leagues, like the one my son plays in, you play everyone. But in two years, he’ll be at a point where tryouts and skills matter. Not everyone makes the team. He knows that, so he works hard and practices hard. What would happen if he was guaranteed a spot?”

“He wouldn’t need to try. But you pay all your people according to a schedule, without regard to their skills and abilities, right?”

I shook my head, “No. We do have levels which reflect the general skills, which you can progress through by showing your abilities, but within each of those levels, it’s as you say. We don’t use salary as a motivator or de-motivator. If you don’t perform, you don’t stay. It’s really that simple.”

“Aren’t some people motivated by money?”

“Sure, and they can make a lot of it at NIKA. If they’re motivated by making more than the person in the next cubicle or office, then we don’t want them. And we’re clear about that up front. We’ve had people turn us down because they don’t like the way we do things, and that’s fine. They can go work somewhere else. We also don’t get into bidding wars, nor do we penalize someone who was being underpaid at their old job. That’s a foolish tactic employed by most companies - when they ask you for your current salary, they base their offer on THAT, rather than on your skills and your value to the company.”

“Refill?” Krissy asked, holding out her cup.

“Yes, but remember what I said.”

“You’re touchy about drinking? Why?”

“Alcoholic friends, and the fact that it impairs judgment. Not to mention Deborah and I have serious work to do in the morning, and you have training. Pretty much anything in moderation is OK, but you have to be careful with excess in anything.”

“Including sex?”

I nodded, “Of course. But the definition of excess is going to vary by person. I’m not one of those people who thinks guys are studs and girls are sluts. It’s only excessive if you think it’s excessive, or if it’s having negative effects on your relationships or other parts of your life. In that way, it’s a lot like drinking, or gambling for that matter. Or anything, really.”

“And that applies to your kids? Including your daughters?”

“Yes, of course. I’m no hypocrite. In fact, being a hypocrite or breaking your word are the two gravest sins in my book. Can I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“Who’s going to have the baby?”

“We were actually thinking one apiece,” Krissy said. “Which is why Deborah suggested we ask your advice.”

“Same guy?” I asked.

“Volunteering for the job?” Krissy asked with a smirk.

“Vasectomy.”

“After seven kids, I guess I’m not surprised. We were leaning towards the same guy, which is why we were thinking of finding a guy who would live with us afterwards. Do you and your wives always sleep together?”

I nodded, “When we’re all home, yes. For years, Jessica had long shifts or shorter overnight shifts, and given my travel, it often happens that we don’t. But that’s our goal. Is that what you’re struggling with?”

“The whole configuration. Again, that’s why we’re asking you for advice. You seem to have worked out something with your wives.”

“I think anything can be worked out, but you have to find a guy who is willing to accept what it is you want, or you have to be willing to compromise. If you want him to be around as Dad, but not as, and I’ll use this term advisedly, ‘husband’, then you’ll have to agree what’s acceptable and what isn’t. Assuming for the moment it’s ‘dad only’ - could he have sleepovers? Can he father a baby by another woman? Could he marry?

“Your other options for him living with you involve anything from occasional sex to a relationship similar to mine. I guess I don’t know you well enough to know if that’s something that could work for you or not. And if it’s only occasional sex, you have all the questions I asked before. And then you get into questions of STD tests and who is OK and who isn’t, and suddenly you’re involved in his outside sex life.”

“How are your wives involved?”