Chapter 11

Dad came home shortly after Mr. Blackmore left. I'd cleaned up the beer bottles and carried the remainder of the twelve-pack back up to my room and re-stashed it in my closet. I thought about telling Dad that I'd received tentative permission to resume my relationship with Nina but eventually decided to keep silent about it. After all, he might change his mind. People did that. I figured I'd give it a few days and see how things went before I made any mention.

I considered calling in sick for my job at the pizza joint that night. I'd been up most of the night worrying about the reunion with Nina and the beer I'd drank with Mr. Blackmore certainly hadn't helped my fatigue. But in the end my work ethic wouldn't allow me to call in on my first scheduled day back after my injury. I showered up and drug myself in.

My manager was very pleased to see me return and offered some of the same comments that Mindy had earlier that day. He became very displeased however when I told him that I'd been recommended for hiring at the hospital and that, in all likelihood, January 25 would be my last day working for him.

"That's really too bad, Bill," he said sadly. "You're one of the best workers I've ever had here. Like you said when I originally interviewed you, you're not a typical teenager. I'd even offer to give you a raise if I thought it would help keep you but unfortunately I can't afford to match six dollars an hour."

I told him I understood and that I appreciated him hiring me and giving me a chance to prove myself and blah, blah, blah. I kept my amusement at his pathetic attempt to lure me to stay longer to myself. In truth I had never much liked the man. He was a shameless exploiter of teenaged labor and he'd never bothered to offer me a raise before. But I also believed in not burning my bridges behind me. If things didn't work out at the hospital for whatever bizarre reason, I knew he'd hire me back in an instant. If I went in and wrote my resignation in urine on his wall, he might not be so inclined.

I was exhausted by the time I got off that night. When I got home I barely was able to remove my clothes before I fell into bed. Less than a minute later I was fast asleep; the first good night of sleep I'd had in a while.

The next morning I waited near the front of the school again. This day the sky had cleared of snow clouds and the wind had returned. The air temperature was a chilling eleven degrees at that time of the morning. The wind chill factor was probably somewhere below zero. You gotta love Spokane in the winter. I shivered and shook and felt the tears that were streaming from my eyes freezing on my cheeks. Finally I spotted Mrs. Blackmore pulling to the curb. Nina hopped out and headed for the school while her mother pulled quickly away and headed off.

Nina was looking around immediately, braving putting her face into the wind to search for me. I raised my hand and she rushed to me, colliding with me so hard that both of us nearly went down into the snow bank. As always the feel of her body against mine, even through multiple layers of winter clothing, made me feel warm all over.

"I can't believe it!" she yelled, kissing my face and my lips. "How did you do it? What did you say?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked nonchalantly.

"You know what I'm talking about," she said, smiling broadly. "I couldn't believe it. Daddy sat me down last night and told me that if I insisted on seeing you that he wouldn't stop me." The smile faded a little. "He said he still didn't particularly care for you or trust you, but that he saw no advantage to trying to keep us apart."

"Well," I said, "it's not exactly a dowry of a kingdom just yet. But it's a start. And your mom?"

"Mom wasn't too happy about his decision," she admitted. "In fact, I heard them arguing about it. They were actually yelling at each other when he told her. Finally they started whispering back and forth, so I couldn't hear what was being said. She didn't seem too happy this morning but she didn't tell me to stay away from you like she did yesterday."

"So I guess I won't be coming over for any family dinners in the near future?" I asked.

She kissed me again, a long, luxuriant kiss. "Not just yet," she said. "But give it time."

We started walking into the school. "So what did you say to Daddy anyway?" she asked. "He wouldn't tell me."

"I don't think your dad would really like it if I told you what we talked about," I answered. "It was kind of personal."

"Did it have to do with the years after the war like you thought?" she asked, her curiosity plain on her face.

"Nina, I really don't think he would want you to know what he said. Sorry."

She frowned. "You must have some sort of gift, Bill. How you got Dad to open up to you, how you convinced him to let us be together." She shook her head. "Will you tell me someday? Someday in a few years?"

"I'll consider it," I told her. "In the meantime, I have the night off. I was wondering if you would do me the honor of accompanying me to dinner and a movie tonight?"

She gave me another kiss, again in front of everyone on the quad. "I suppose," she said. "Unless something better comes along of course."

We decided it would be a good idea to establish with her parents that we would in fact be seeing each other. With that in mind I agreed to pick Nina up for our date at her house, just like a normal teenager would do. It had seemed like a good idea when we discussed it but as I pulled my car up to the curb that night I felt that maybe it hadn't been such a hot plan after all. My body was tensed up with nervous tension and I hesitated before I was able to pull myself out of my Datsun and trudge up to the curb. There was another long hesitation before I could bring myself to ring the doorbell.

My nervousness turned out to be unfounded. Nina answered the door and quickly stepped out of it onto the porch. The reason for my nervousness however, was not so unfounded. Nina, dressed in a nice pair of slacks, her hair styled attractively (the mark of Tracy and Cindy), looked a little upset.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"Let's go," she replied, heading down the porch for my car.

After a brief moment I followed her.

As we drove downtown towards the restaurant where I'd made reservations she told me what had happened.

"Mom is not very keen on Dad's decision to allow us to date," she told me.

"No?" I asked, not terribly surprised after the story that Mr. Blackmore had told me. It was Mrs. Blackmore, after all, that had born the brunt of the Bob Simpson episode.

"No," she agreed. "They've been arguing and fighting pretty much since you first talked to him. When I told Dad that you and I were going out tonight he kind of grunted at me but didn't say anything. But when I told Mom..." She shook her head. "Mom started in right away about how she didn't agree with Dad, about how she thought you were a lowdown slimebag, and how she didn't think I should be going out with you. She told me I would be staying home and that despite what my father had said, that I was not to see you anymore."

"Wow," I commented.

"I appealed to Dad and they had another argument, a pretty nasty one. Dad finally told me I could go out with you tonight. Mom stayed in her room and wouldn't come out."

"I'm sorry," I told her, not really sure what I was apologizing for.

"Bill, I almost didn't go tonight. Mom and Dad have never fought like this. Never! The most they've ever done in front of me is have little squabbles over money or housework or something. This is tearing them apart! Do you know how that makes me feel? I almost cancelled my date with you just to keep them from fighting."

"But you didn't," I said softly.

"I couldn't, Bill," she told me. "I need to be with you. I couldn't bear to call you up and tell you I wouldn't come tonight. I couldn't bear not seeing you. Oh Christ, why does all of this have to be so damn complicated? Is this going to happen every time we go out?"

I let my hand drop to her knee where I patted it. "Nina," I told her, "I don't think it's going to happen every time."

"Why not?"

"There's one thing I learned while I was talking to your dad," I explained. "That is that your parents love each other deeply. They always have. They have the kind of love that you and I have and believe me, that kind of love is rare among married couples. This won't break them apart. And I believe it's one of those things that starts off as bad as it's going to get and then gradually gets better as time goes by. Your mom and your dad are waiting for me to break you heart. They think that's what my purpose is due to various things in their past. Do you remember the day I came to the emergency room?"

"Of course," she answered. "I remember everything about that day."

"I told you that you would be taking a gamble by returning to me, that you were gambling with the possibility that I might break your heart again. Remember?"

"Yes."

"Your parents are trying to contemplate that same gamble," I told her. "Only they don't have much to lose in it. You have the possibility of love to lose. They really don't have anything. No matter what happens, they'll still have you. They don't realize that they're gambling with your happiness of course. They just perceive that I'm an asshole and that you'd be better off without me. Now I've managed to change your dad's views on me a little with the talk we had, but I haven't managed to change your mom's views. As time goes on however, and when I don't break your heart, and when they see that you are happy, I think they'll come around. Just remember, this is probably as bad as it's going to get."

She nodded and put her hand on top of mine. I gave her knee another squeeze. "You do have a way of making people feel better, Bill," she told me.

"I do my best," I replied. "Now let's forget about your parents for a while and go out and have a good time. That's what people in love are supposed to do, right?"

She picked up my hand and put it to her lips, kissing it briefly. "Right," she answered.

A good time we had. We went to dinner at a steakhouse restaurant, both of us having the prime rib. Afterwards we drove to the movie theater, just in time to catch a showing of War Games. The movie had been out long enough that not too many people were in the theater. We sat in the back row, in the lover's section.

I had seen War Games before of course, way back when. I found it not terribly interesting since the computer technology was completely antiquated from my point of view and because it's main pretense was something I knew was never going to happen. After all, the Soviet Union was going to fall in seven more years taking with it the threat of sudden nuclear annihilation. But I enjoyed it all the same because Nina was there with me.

We held hands and cuddled up together through the first part of the movie. By the time the FBI agents were taking our hero into custody our lips had drifted together and the movie was all but forgotten as we slid our tongues into each other's mouths contentedly. Our kisses became more heated, more frantic as the minutes ticked past. My erection throbbed in my pants, eventually bringing a dull ache with it, an ache that I knew would be pleasantly agonizing by the time this evening was over and would only be relieved in my bedroom.

Nina was similarly aroused. She clung harshly to me, pressing herself to me, her hands trailing up and down my body. She had removed her coat when we'd sat down and even with the dim lighting I could see that her nipples were protruding outward, visible through the material of her sweater. The sight of them nearly made me crazy and I longed to place my hand upon them, to slide my fingers under the hem of the sweater, to force my way into her bra. I could imagine what her flesh would feel like against my palm and the very thought almost made me have an accident in my pants.

Nina's lips left my mouth and slowly trailed down to my neck. She began kissing and sucking lightly, nipping at my earlobes. This made me tremble with desire and it took every ounce of my willpower to keep from trying to push her a little farther.

Near the end of the movie she pulled her lips from my neck. She was panting and her voice sounded frustrated. "Bill," she whispered in my ear, "are my boobs too small?"

"What?" I panted back, shifting myself in my seat, trying to reposition my painful erection.

"Don't you like them?" she asked. "Are they too small for you?"

"No, Nina," I told her. "They're beautiful. Really. But why..."

"Then why won't you touch them?" she asked.

"What?" I couldn't have been more surprised if she'd asked why I couldn't concentrate real hard and levitate my body into the air.

"I've been trying to push them into you for the past twenty minutes," she told me. "All my life I've heard about girls getting felt up at the movies. I want to get felt up, Bill. So put your damn hands on my tits!"

I looked at her, feeling an extra burst of blood going to my wang. This was Nina talking like this! Nina! Her words almost made me lose control of myself.

"I didn't think..."

"No you didn't," she breathed. "Now touch me. Show me how much you like them."

She leaned forward and kissed me again, her right hand taking my left. She placed it on the swell of her breast and I felt the softness, the firmness that I'd fantasized so much about. Even through the sweater I felt the hardness of the nipple pushing into my hand. I groaned and began to softly squeeze her. She moaned back into my mouth.

It was less than five minutes before my hand slid down to the hem of her sweater and found it's way underneath. Nina offered no protest, in fact she arched her back to give me freer access. I felt the soft, smooth skin of her stomach as my palm worked its way upward. I felt the ribs beneath the flesh and finally the wire and cotton of her bra. With a practiced push of my fingers, my hand was beneath and her breast was against palm, her nipple pushing into it.

Her breathing became frantic as I caressed her, her tongue plunging deeper and deeper into my mouth. Her own hand slid beneath my sweater, feeling my flesh, caressing it. Finally it slid back down, her fingers hesitating at the waist of my pants. They pushed on and her hand found the bulge at my crotch. She gave it an experimental squeeze; a squeeze which almost made me come right there.

"Oh, Bill," she whispered, breaking the kiss for an instant.

"Uhhh," was all I could say in reply.

She continued to caress me through my pants while I continued to feel her bare breasts beneath her bra. I switched from one to the other, comparing them, touching them, relishing them. All too soon the music from the speakers picked up a notch and we looked up to see the credits rolling across the screen. Around us other people were standing and heading for the exits. Reluctantly we broke apart, extricating our hands from each other.

She gave me one final kiss. "Good movie," she commented breathlessly.

"Yeah," I agreed. "The best I've seen to this point."

It was well before ten o'clock when I dropped her off in front of her house. Our kiss goodnight was sedate and brief in deference to the fact that one or both of her parents were probably watching through the curtains. We told each other 'I love you' and she stepped out of the Datsun. She paused at the front door, giving me one last wave. A second later she was safely inside.

I drove home slowly, my balls aching desperately, the pain increasing with each bump my sub-standard shock absorbers didn't absorb. The house was dark when I let myself in. I took myself upstairs and undressed. Ten seconds later I had myself in hand. Twenty seconds after that it was over. I rolled over and fell asleep.

She came over the next day to study for finals, which were coming up fast. We spread the books from our common classes on the coffee table and I put on an album I'd found in my dad's record cabinet. I was actually interested in studying. I needed to nail down the Biochemistry test in order to keep my average high enough to qualify for the academic scholarship I had my eye upon. But Nina had other ideas.

She began kissing the side of my neck and rubbing herself against me. I could feel the press of her breasts against my arm and could remember how they'd felt against my hand.

"Nina," I protested playfully, not pulling away from her, "we're supposed to be studying."

She took my face in her hands and turned it towards hers. Her eyes were shining. "This is Bio-chemistry, isn't it?" she asked, putting her lips to mine, licking out with her tongue.

"In a way," I agreed, putting my arms around her.

We kissed and licked on each other's necks and ears. I tasted the salty tang of her flesh, nibbled on the softness of her earlobe, kissed the back of her neck just below the hairline. My hand found its way beneath her shirt and bra again. I caressed her breasts gently, with more care than I'd been able to show the previous night in the movie theater. Her nipple pushed insistently against my hand. Her breathing quickened at my touch and her arms tightened around my back. She leaned backwards into the couch, pulling me atop her, allowing me to feel her entire body pressed against mine. My erection pressed into her hip and I couldn't help but push it more firmly against her.

She felt this and shifted beneath me, bring one of her legs outward until it was resting on the floor. Suddenly the crotch of my jeans was pushing against the crotch of hers. Her hands dropped down to my butt and pulled firmly, grinding me against her.

I groaned at the contact and our kiss broke. We looked into each other's eyes. Hers showed desire and the realization that things were getting very serious. There was some fear there as well. Finally she put her mouth back to mine and pulled me against her, encouraging me with her hips to push myself to her. I did, finding the sensation pleasantly unfulfilling.

The sound of our garage door opening made us pull apart. Dad was home. Was he early? A quick glance at the clock showed that he was actually a little late. Time had slipped by that quickly. By the time he entered the house we were composed again and studying away. If he had any suspicions to the contrary, he kept them to himself.

Nina and I made plans to do some more studying the next afternoon. Some real studying this time. She told me that she would be a little later than usual.

"How come?" I asked.

"Oh, I just have a little something to take care of," she told me mysteriously. "It's nothing big."

"Fair enough," I replied, feeling mild curiosity at what that "little something" might be. But we talked no more on the subject.

She came over to my house about an hour later than usual. Dad was already home by then so we did nothing but study and exchange kisses on the porch as she was leaving.

As January wound onward Nina and I got together as much as we could. Usually it was at my house to study or to listen to music or to talk or to make out on the couch before Dad got home. On Saturday and Sundays, before I went to work, we would typically spend the day together doing something. Skiing was a passion we both shared and when the weather permitted we made the drive to the Idaho ski resorts and spent the day on the slopes. We would hold and kiss each other as we ascended on the ski lifts. We would cuddle together in the warmth of the lodge afterward, sipping coffee and talking of things that lovers talked of before making the long drive home. We were in love and the time passed quickly when we were together, slowly when we were apart. Our intimacies did not progress beyond my sliding my hand up under her shirt or her feeling the outline of my erection through my pants. Most of the time we merely kissed and held each other.

Things reached an uncomfortable impasse at the Blackmore household. According to Nina her mother no longer protested when she went out with me or went over to my house. She never withheld the car from her since she knew that I would simply come pick her up in mine if it was required. But she was obviously not very happy about her continued rendezvous with me either. Her mom and dad also stopped fighting with each other. But at the same time there was a strain in their relationship that hadn't been there before. She told me it was like they were constantly waiting for a hammer to fall, a hammer that simply kept hanging there above them. Nina felt considerable guilt for the way her parents were feeling, as did I when I heard her stories, but not enough to stop our visits. I only hoped that someday they would accept me as part of their family because I intended to be a part of it whether they liked it or not.

One afternoon after school we were watching television on the couch. Dad was not yet home from work and Nina was lying in my lap with her feet outstretched. I stroked her hair for a while and then her face. She cooed as I did this and I noticed that she had a few pimples near her nose and on her chin. They were not large or unsightly and she had done a decent job of covering them with make-up. I noticed them primarily because I'd never seen acne on her face before. She had one of those smooth complexions that just wasn't prone to it.

"Pimples," she said with disgust when she noticed me looking at them. "Are they bad?"

"Not at all," I assured her. "Every teenager gets them from time to time."

"I know," she answered, "but I've never had them before. Not until last week anyway."

"Maybe the stress of being in love has given them to you," I suggested jokingly.

She chuckled. "In a way you're completely right," she answered.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I'll explain later," she said.

"What do you mean?"

She reached up and grabbed me by the hair, pulling my face to hers. "Later," she whispered, licking at my lips. "Your dad will be home soon."

We made out in that position for a while and then finally twisted around so that she was lying atop me. As we kissed she rubbed her crotch gently back and forth across mine, arousing me greatly. My hands slid under her shirt once more, caressing her bare back, finally working around to her front. However this time, when they slid under her bra she winced as if in pain.

"What's the matter?" I asked, instantly withdrawing my hand, bothered by the thought I might have hurt her.

"It's nothing," she told me dismissively. "They're just a little sore."

"Sore?" I asked, remembering uncomfortably what that had meant when my wife had begun to complain of that. That certainly wasn't possible with Nina. If it was, I'd sadly misread her.

"It'll go away," she said. "Don't worry about it."

But the mood was broken for that day. When Dad came home he found us sitting together on the couch watching the Phil Donahue show while we held hands.

I was officially given an offer of employment from the trauma center on January 15. I accepted it later that day. When I went to work at the pizza joint that night I officially gave notice to the manager that I would be leaving his fine employ. He gave one more try at convincing me to stay, offering to make me an assistant manager and bumping my salary to a whole four and a quarter an hour.

"I know the hospital is offering you more than that," he told me, "but I'm offering you a management position. That looks awfully good on the old resume."

I respectfully declined his offer and he took it well. He told me that if I ever found myself in need of a job, that I should see him first. I told him I would.

January 24 was my last day there. I clocked out at 10:00 and turned in my uniform to him. We shook hands and he told me he would miss me. Though I didn't particularly like him, he had given me a job and had helped me earn money for college. I felt I owed him a little bit.

"You know what you need to do?" I told him just before I walked out the door.

"What's that, Bill?" he asked.

"Get into pizza delivery," I suggested.

He looked at me strangely. "Pizza delivery? Nobody does that. It isn't financially feasible."

"If you do it right, it will be," I said. "You see, Americans are lazy. If they can get someone to drive their pizza to them, then they'll do it. There are two tricks to this that you need to employ. One, you need to make sure their pizza is still hot when it arrives. You'll need to come up with some sort of insulated carrier for that. Shouldn't be too hard," I assured him. "The technology is out there. The second thing you need to do, and this is hard for a business person to accept, is not charge people for the delivery."

He laughed. "That's very interesting, Bill," he said, "but you don't know a whole lot about business. How could I not charge someone a delivery fee for driving their pizza to them? How would I pay for the driver? How would I pay for the gas?"

"Ahhh," I said, "that's the thing. With all due respect, I know a considerable amount about business. It's what I'll be majoring in in college and I've studied quite extensively on my own. If you were smart, you'd listen to my advice. I'm not wrong about this."

He seemed more amused than awed by my speech. "Okay, Bill," he told me patronizingly, "tell me how I can magically deliver pizzas at no cost to the customer and still make a profit on them."

"It's simple," I said. "You hire an eighteen year old kid with a car and pay him four dollars an hour or so. You stipulate that he pays for the gas, insurance, and uses his own vehicle. His main job will be the deliveries but when there are none going on, you can also have him help out around here making pizzas for the regular customers, sweeping up, doing dishes, whatever. You will have to shell out a little cash for advertising to make it known to the general public in your area that you deliver. Your target group is those people who are too lazy or too busy to make food and who don't really want to go out to pick something up. They will be the people who would otherwise have made some hamburger helper or something instead of going out. If they know that they can call your number and have a hot pizza at their front door in less than an hour, they'll do it. Pizza will triumph over hamburger helper every time. When you do your ads you need to put in something like "guaranteed hot and fresh in forty minutes or less" or some crap like that. You also need to put in "no delivery fee". Your pizza sales will go up enough to cover the four bucks an hour the extra employee makes and will give you considerable profit. Remember, you're snaring people who would not otherwise have come in here and bought a pizza. That's the key to the whole thing. Your driver will get tips from those he delivers to since the public will feel obligated to give him a buck or so since there's no delivery fee. Your driver is happy because he's making reasonably good money and gets to get out. The public is happy because they don't have to go out and pick up their pizza. And you're happy because your sales are going up. You would do especially well on Friday nights, and on Sunday afternoons during football season. Trust me on this, it'll work and it'll work well."

He smiled condescendingly at me. "Well thanks for the advice, Bill," he said. "I'll certainly take it under consideration."

"You do that," I smiled back, knowing that he would do no such thing. Oh well, his loss. In two or three years when the pizza delivery craze hit the nation he would undoubtedly think back on this conversation and wonder why he hadn't listened to me. You can't change the world.

When I stepped out of the pizza parlor I saw that a blizzard had blown in at some point. Cursing I got in my car and drove very carefully home. As I pulled into my driveway I stopped, staring down the street. A smile formed on my face. In Anita's driveway a late model Buick was parked. A late model Buick I'd once crouched next to as I pulled a coil wire from Anita's vehicle. It was nearly 10:30 at night. Jack Valentine wasn't merely popping by for a visit. He was staying the night. Fate had reclaimed what was hers. And for once I was ecstatic about it.

My new work schedule was both better and worse than my old. I went to the hospital at 12:00 each afternoon, Monday through Friday. I worked straight through until six o'clock in the evening with only two ten-minute breaks. In a way it was an exploitation of labor laws. Thirty hours a week was just under what they had to consider full time and thus pay benefits for. And six hours a day was just under what they had to give a lunch break for. I didn't mind being exploited however, especially after I saw my first paycheck. At six bucks an hour times thirty hours a week minus the miniscule amount of taxes they took out I made damn near a hundred and fifty bucks; a small fortune for a teenager. When I subtracted living expenses from this I put three quarters of it into the computer stocks I was now investing in. I would do this on every subsequent paycheck. My day was coming closer and closer.