Chapter 41: Homecoming

August 19, 2000, Chicago, Illinois

“Seriously?! Argh!!” Jessica complained.

The arrivals’ board at O’Hare had just changed to say Kara’s flight was delayed by forty minutes over the short delay they’d had leaving San Francisco.

“How does that even happen?” she asked. “They took off about ten minutes late, but they’re flying east, with the tailwind!”

“A combination of air traffic, a landing slot, and gate availability,” I replied. “I’ve had a lot of good luck, but when it goes wrong, it can go spectacularly wrong. And I don’t mean a crash, just hours of delay. Once you get airborne, the amount of delay is limited by fuel reserves. Can I buy you coffee?”

“Sure. It’s just I’m so hyped to see her!”

“And those little girls over there who are sitting calmly reading their books?” I asked, nodding towards Birgit and Stephie who were, indeed, sitting quietly in chairs reading books.

“You’re very annoying at times, Tiger!”

“Only at times?” I asked with a smirk. “I’ll have to try harder!”

Jessica smacked my arm, but then gave me quick kiss. I let the girls know we were going to get coffee and asked if they wanted anything. They didn’t, so Jessica and I got coffee and went back to where the girls were still reading. Ashley had declined, preferring to play with her friends, and Albert was with Dave’s boys making up for lost time during his trip to England.

“I enjoyed having time together, but I really missed having Kara around,” Jessica said quietly.

“You and me both,” I agreed. “The girls really missed her, even if Birgit did her best not to show it.”

“Miss Nonchalant? The one who is fazed by nothing?”

“Or so she’d have you believe,” I replied. “When we have our cuddle time she does talk to me about things that bother her, and I’m not just talking about Jesse.”

“Except those two have teamed up!”

“It had to happen eventually! But there are things which bother Birgit, including missing her mom. She chooses to only share those with me and Katy, and there are some things which she only shares with Katy.”

“And those are going to be the most interesting ones!” Jessica declared.

“Obviously, which is exactly why her moms and her dad are not privy to them, any more than we are her diary.”

“I’m constantly amazed at how mellow you are about that.”

“I love my kids and I want them to be independent, self-actualizing individuals who are in control of their own lives. It was my fondest dream when I was a teenager. It was the one thing I would have asked for had I been granted any wish - to be free to live my life the way I best saw fit. I daresay you and Kara had similar experiences, and in some ways, similar devastating consequences. Those two young adults over there are NOT being harmed by ‘missing their childhood’.”

“I can’t believe Heather’s mom said that to Jennifer and Josie!”

“No kidding. If ‘childhood’ is supposed to be about learning and experimenting, cloistering your kids is actually depriving them of their childhood! This bit about ‘growing up too fast’ that I’ve seen now applied to teenagers in the press is just plain nuts! It all started with the idiotic ‘stranger danger’ panic and now it’s morphed into turning teenagers into toddlers, or keeping them as toddlers.”

“The new medical students who arrived last month are incredibly naïve and inexperienced, and your prediction about them getting worse seems well-founded. Suzanne is head-and-shoulders above them, and she hasn’t even started her Senior year of High School!”

“Her parents aren’t quite as enlightened as we are, but they appear not to have bought into the current way of thinking. And just imagine, in twenty years, those med students are likely to have teenagers of their own, the product of two generations of infantilization.”

“That’s downright depressing. I thought Dad was going to scream when a female med student blushed and stammered when we were discussing a prostate cancer diagnosis!”

“We should send Birgit to talk to her about orgies,” I chuckled.

“That still has to be about the funniest thing that’s happened in the house so far!”

“So far,” I chuckled. “But we only have two teenagers at the moment - Jesse and Matthew. Wait until we have seven! And all the cousins! Can you imagine the hijinks?”

“You love it, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course, because among other things it’s the biggest ‘fuck you’ to my mom possible. Just wait until she visits at some point in the future when Stephie and Nicholas are sleeping together, as well as Matthew and Chelsea, Albert and Jane, and whomever else our other kids pair off with!”

“She’ll run screaming from the house.”

“I can only hope,” I replied.

“How is Jesse doing?”

“Cynthia is an effective balm for Jesse’s wounds, though he’s struggling now because it’s clear that Kelly wants to be his girlfriend.”

“Maybe the prim and proper front is similar to a certain Russian girl of your acquaintance!”

“Tatyana has Russian sensibilities; Kelly’s parents are fairly typically socially conservative South-siders. But they aren’t anything like Carol or even Heather’s mom.”

“I still don’t know what Carol expected! I mean, those two have been joined at the hip since before Jesse was even six months old!”

“Yes, and her problem was when they turned to face each other and were joined in another way!” I chuckled.

“Yes, but seriously, how dumb is it to tear your daughter away from what very likely would have been the only boy she ever had sex with? Those two were on a collision course with marriage from the beginning, and even the hot little Russian number wouldn’t have been able to dissuade him.”

“Amber would have done her level best to figure out a way,” I chuckled. “But Jesse was single-minded about Francesca. He still is, to some extent. In his mind playing with Cynthia isn’t a problem because it’s not a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. Kelly, on the other hand, IS an issue because it would be the final admission that he and Francesca are done. He knows that, but he doesn’t feel it. If he and Kelly were to become boyfriend and girlfriend, THEN he’d feel it, because unless he broke the link in his mind, any kind of intimacy would be very close to infidelity.”

“April?”

“I’m having a difficult time seeing any red-blooded fourteen-year-old male turning down a smoking hot MILF who wanted to fuck!”

“Does that make me a DILF?” Jessica asked with a smirk.

“For me? Absolutely! Your medical students might be scared!”

“For all the naivety, they sure do like to talk big!”

“Ooh, the sexy trauma surgeon gets hit on by twenty-three-year-old studs?”

“Wanna-be studs,” Jessica laughed. “Somehow I doubt their experiences are anything close to yours! And I have a thousand bucks which say none of them would even consider cunnilingus after cumming in a girl!”

“Well, unless you’re changing your tune on who gets to cum in you, there’s no way to find out!”

“No thanks! You know full well there was only one other guy with whom I even really considered it. Well, not counting the weird situation with my ‘brother’.”

“Jorge.”

“Obviously. But he was too much of a friend to you to ever do it, even with your express permission. And I have to say, that permission did surprise me.”

I laughed, hard, “Oh, right, because I can bang anything that moves, but you can’t make love with the one guy on the planet you truly loved? Seriously?”

“It was the reason, Tiger,” Jessica said quietly. “I would have done it to hurt you, which would have destroyed both Jorge and me. It was like my decision to have an abortion - that was to hurt you in the worst way possible. I’m so glad that didn’t happen.”

“Me, too,” I soothed. “And it’s all in the past. I love you and nothing is going to change that and I’m not going to dwell on things which didn’t happen.”

“I love you, Tiger.”

“I love you, too, Babe. And look, the board just switched to ‘Landed’.”

“And now Kara is frustrated as can be because the arrival time is still twenty minutes from now!”

“That is when I have to just close my eyes, take deep breaths, and try to forget that I’m being held captive in a metal tube because airlines and airports are seriously inefficient! Even the government recognizes it. There’s a study that started about five years ago into ‘free flight’ which would try to remove the bottleneck and problems of Air Traffic Control, and open up more airspace. The problem from my point of view with THAT is that it relies on perfect functioning of computers and sensors, and that idea just makes me laugh.”

“Personal experience?”

“Obviously! For example, the ‘glass cockpits’ are just fine, so long as you also have analogue instruments - artificial horizon indicator, altimeter, airspeed indicator, and a compass. And fly-by-wire is OK, so long as there is sufficient backup and a way to override the computer if necessary.”

“The whole bit with you not trusting computers is so funny given you make so much money from them!”

“Babe, we’re insane about our coding standards and our testing, and WE still have bugs in our code. And we’re just running software for legal and medical professionals, not flying a 747 or the Space Shuttle! Nobody is going to die because NIKA Legal crashes at an inopportune moment! Would you accept a fully automated surgical system which only allowed you to press buttons and not directly intervene if something went wrong?”

“No, of course not! That said, with some of the new Residents who arrived in June, I might actually be better off if I was being treated by a computer!”

“You sound just like your dad did when I first met him, and YOU were one of his top students!”

“Whatever!” Jessica said, rolling her eyes.

“And Malik always referred to surgical Residents as ‘butchers’.”

“They do improve.”

“Watch one, do one, teach one?”

“That is the saying.”

“Who’s covering for you today?”

“Brett, the new Attending. He’s not TOO bad; he just finished his Fellowship in May. I owe him a shift in two weeks, so I’ll miss a Tuesday evening at home. I put it on the calendar.”

“Which shift?”

“4:00pm to 2:00am. I can sleep in on Wednesday because I don’t teach until 11:00am.”

“Cool.”

“And you and Kara should NOT come to get me, Tiger.”

“Says you!” I replied.

“It’s silly!”

“It’s love.”

“Those two things often go together, don’t they?”

“So it would seem. And look, ‘At Gate’!”

Birgit had noticed as well, so she and Stephie closed their books, put them in their bags and came over to stand with Jessica and me. About five minutes later a gorgeous blonde woman of our acquaintance breezed through the security doors and was nearly tackled by two little girls, who actually, were no longer so little at twelve and ten. Kara scooped both girls into her arms and hugged them. After a minute, she put them down and the three of them came over to where Jessica and I were waiting. We each hugged and kissed her, then the three of us had a group hug.

“I’ve missed you both,” Kara said.

“And we’ve missed you,” Jessica said.

“Can we get my bags, go home, and fuck like bunny rabbits, please?”

“Mom!” Stephie exclaimed, exasperated as she usually was by ‘sex’ talk in public.

Birgit simply smirked and rolled her eyes.

“Well, Little Bunny Rabbit,” I said, “that is what your moms and I are going to do!”

“But other people!” she protested.

“I think they have a pretty good idea what we’re going to do! And you’re eventually going to do it with Nicholas!”

“Yes, but I’m not going to TALK about it!” she stated firmly.

“You’re a very private person,” Kara said. “And that’s OK. Your mom, on the other hand, is not!”

“TELL me about it!” my precocious ten-year-old exclaimed.

The five of us went to the baggage claim and I got Kara’s two bags from the belt. Once the agent from American verified the luggage tags and the claim checks, we headed to the parking lot. I put the bags into the BMW, and Kara and her daughters settled into the back seat while Jessica and I got into the front seats. Forty minutes later, I pulled into the driveway at the house, and parked. Ten minutes after that, Kara, Jessica, and I were in the shower together. We made sure she was clean from head to toe, then took her to bed and did our level best to fuck her unconscious. As was usually the case, she still had energy when Jessica and I ran out of steam.

“What are we doing for dinner?” Kara asked, her naked body spreadeagled on top of Jessica and me, who were lying close together, side-by-side.

“Stephanie and Birgit are cooking,” I replied. “I’m not sure what they’re making.”

“Family sauna after dinner?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And then some soft, gentle lovemaking?”

“As you wish!”

August 21, 2000, Chicago, Illinois

“Steve, can I introduce the new team members?” Ladonna, the assistant Bob and Elyse shared, asked from the door to my office.

“Sure,” I replied, standing up.

“This is Kendra Jackson, a new developer.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

“And Clark Brody, a new Senior QA Engineer.”

“Nice to meet you as well. Where were you both working?”

“A body shop,” Kendra said. “They laid off a bunch of people in June.”

“SPSS,” Clark said. “I’ve been there since I graduated in 1985.”

“Working for Stevie Hamburg?”

“You know him?”

“I know a few people at SPSS,” I replied. “We’ve done a bunch of work for them overseas. Where did you go to school?”

“A podunk state university in Ohio about two hours from where I grew up in Cincinnati.”

“I’m from Milford,” I replied. “Well, California originally, but I grew up in Milford. How about you, Kendra?”

“I was born in California, went to USC, moved to San Francisco for work, and then when the layoffs began, decided I needed to look elsewhere. I ran into Ross Brown and he referred me.”

“Welcome, both of you. And I hope you enjoy working for NIKA! Thanks, Ladona.”

“You’re welcome!”

She left and I turned back to my workstation.

“Wow, two African Americans on the same day?” Penny asked.

“You know we’re trying, but the ratios in colleges are skewed towards white males in a serious way. I don’t believe in affirmative action, but I really don’t want this place looking like a Klan convention!”

Penny laughed, “You mean like most of the law firms and some of the bigger consulting gigs?”

“Exactly. That always bugged Jamie at Allen & Baker. McCarthy/Jenkins actually set out to find women and minority lawyers. Ned’s point was that his firm should look like the community he’s serving. And he sure as heck didn’t lower his standards any more than we have.”

“And it’s not like we aren’t diverse. Speaking of which, how are things with Aisyaha?”

“That all seems to have cleared up, fortunately. That’s the kind of shit I just won’t tolerate.”

“Would you have canceled the contract?”

“Not my purview, but I certainly would have counseled Barbara and Stephanie to tell the medical director to take a long walk off a short pier! I’d rather take a pay cut than work with bigoted assholes.”

“Do Charlie and Clayton still get grief?”

“Sadly, though not when he’s wearing his uniform. It seems the bigots can respect a naval officer’s uniform, even when he’s with a white woman.”

“As Birgit would say - ‘dumb’. Before I forget, did you talk to Jake?”

“Last Friday evening. He’s only guessing, but he says that Kursk likely went down because either a torpedo or missile exploded in the tube or while being prepared.”

“118 dead?”

“That’s what they’re saying. There’s a joint Norwegian-Russian effort to locate and get into the sub, but it’s been a week, so I agree with the reports that the entire crew perished. Putin made a huge mistake staying on vacation for five days, and it might well cost him the election, though he has most of a term to recover.”

“You met him, right?”

“A couple of times, yes. He was at Jesse’s games in Moscow, and I had met him before that in St. Petersburg.”

“One more question before we get back to work - is Jesse’s church the one that just made Tsar Nicholas II a saint?”

“No. His jurisdiction did that in 1981. This was the main Russian Orthodox Church under the Patriarch of Moscow.”

“He wasn’t exactly a good guy.”

“No, he wasn’t, but in Orthodox theology, it’s the reason you are killed that matters - and in this case, because he was a symbol of Holy Russia. I know, that seems like a bad joke, but it’s theologically sound.”

Penny shook her head, “I just don’t get it, and probably never will. But if it makes Jesse happy, who am I to complain? It’s not like he tries to shove his religion down anyone’s throat like that idiot in LA did with Aisyaha.”

“Exactly.”

Penny turned back to her workstation and I returned to the code I was writing. About fifteen minutes later, a muted ding announced a message.

Petra1983: Happy to have Kara back?”
NIKASteve: What do you think?”
Petra1983: I think you f-cked all night!”
NIKASteve: And all afternoon! 😀
Petra1983: And she wore you out, right?
NIKASteve: Of course.
Petra1983: I talked to my dad about UofC and it’s all good. Not about living with you just yet.
NIKASteve: Cool. Ready for school?”
Petra1983: Just want the year to be over so I can move! Think you can visit before December?
NIKASteve: Maybe, but I have a trip to South America. I’ll do my best.
Petra1983: Not upset if you can’t, just want to see you if possible. Love our talks.
NIKASteve: Same here.
Petra1983: You busy?
NIKASteve: Working on some code.
Petra1983: OK to message you later to chat?
NIKASteve: I have karate, so how about 8:15pm my time?
Petra1983: Perfect! L8r!
NIKASteve: L8r!

I had just started working on the code when I was interrupted once more, this time by the phone buzzing.

“I have Laurel Atkinson on the phone for you,” Kimmy said.