Chapter 27

The day after our gumbo and bluegrass blowout, we woke up to another one of those nasty winter days, an occluded front keeping the skies leaden and dripping. I didn't feel like cooking breakfast and cold cereal just wouldn't do on a day like this. I kissed the nose that was peeking out just above the blankets.

"I'm going back to bed, wife. Call me when you have breakfast ready."

The blanket came down far enough for her to stick her tongue out. "Pancakes and hot coffee sounds awfully good, husband. And you wouldn't have to worry about wakin' up tomorrow morning with an icepick in your earhole."

With the appearance of her red lips, I kissed her through her giggles. "That's another thing to love about you. You know how to compromise!" We got dressed as the thermostat forced the heat from the fifty-five degree "I love to snuggle with you" to the sixty-five degree comfort zone.

It was hovering around forty, the wind raw and damp and gusty as we hustled into the pickup and headed off to breakfast. By this time, not only did the restaurant staff know us, but we were starting to be familiar with some of the Sunday morning crowd. I wrote that up to the striking little redhead I was with.

There were many narratives floating around about Cindy: Mizz Helen's foster daughter. Married at fourteen. The high school thing. Little Miss Cindy and her shotgun. But the Sunday morning crowd was mainly a church crowd, so those who took time to say something, well, they said something nice. I did notice, as did Cindy, that there were a few people who seemed to look askance at our situation.

One of those WASN'T the older guy in a neatly pressed deputy sheriff uniform who was there with his wife. They stopped by to say 'hi'. "You're the little girl that Deputy Stevens told us about, ain't you?" he asked.

"Yessir," Cindy said.

"Me an' Myra just wanted to say 'hi' to you, young lady. Didn't mean to interrupt your breakfast."

"Oh, that's okay," I said as Cindy smiled. "Thank you for taking care of us. Deputy Stevens seems like a good guy."

"Oh, he is," the old guy said. "But he still talks about Miss Cindy here. You're her husband?"

"Yessir. Long story."

"We've heard bits and pieces. He smiled. "Stranger things have happened. Myra was fifteen when she trapped me."

Myra punched her husband playfully. "And he was eighteen. And goin' in the army. And forty years later ... Old goat!"

"Ya'll got time, sit down and drink coffee with us," Cindy said.

"Oh, no, dear," Myra said. "We have to get to church, but maybe some other time, okay?"

"We'd love that. We're here a lot of Sunday mornings," I added. I stood and shook their hands as they left.

I took a sip of coffee, smiling at Cindy. "I'm married to a famous woman."

"It was nice of them to stop by," she said. "But you're what makes me famous. If it weren't for YOU, I'd be just another screwed-up schoolgirl." She paused. "Well, Mizz Helen might've rescued me, but NOT nearly like you did. An' you KNOW I love Mizz Helen. But I seriously doubt that Mizz Helen would be teaching me to fly."

"Maybe not, cutie," I said, "but you might've found an equally interesting path with her. Of course," I mused, "My life would be much poorer."

"Mine, too, Dan." She tossed her head. I don't know if she did that because she was conscious of how I adored her face, framed by that aged copper hair, but every time it did, a part of me melted. "Finish your coffee so we can go home." And a smile that had just a hint of sexuality.

I drained the mug and we stood, paid the ticket, and we were out the door into the nasty drizzle.

"We got beans, baby," she said. "It's a 'soup' kind of day."

"Yeah," I said. "Too nasty to go out and exercise."

Giggle. "I know some pretty good indoor exercises..."

I glanced away from the road to see the delight in those green eyes. "You make a rainy day perfect, little angel," I said. "Perfect for makin' soup and makin' love..."

What a way to spend a nasty Sunday: make happy, giggling love, watch an old movie, stir the soup, eat, take a nap to the occasional sounds of wind-driven rain striking the walls and windows. Make love again. Go find another movie. Reheat the soup for dinner. Play cards with the TV on in the background, shower, go to sleep with the most perfect partner imaginable.

Monday morning's weather wasn't any more pleasant than Sunday's. If anything, it was worse, although the front was slowly pushing through, promising cold and clear in the near future. We did breakfast at the restaurant, I dropped Cindy back at the trailer to wait for the school bus and I went to work.

The project was past the '90% of the work takes 10% of the time' stage and I was tied up in taking all the big pieces and little pieces and correcting the "I didn't know THAT would happen" issues. It was old stories with me, for the most part, communication and control issues, changing modes from those used to facilitate the initial application of high voltage power to those that would carry and control loads when the facility came on line for real.

I'd just had ANOTHER revelatory discussion with the "systems integrator" about how his plans for tying the power system communications needed to, 'you know, actually consider that my communications protocols were ONLY compatible with the rest of the system if we put a little magic box between the two systems, and that MY equipment specifications showed that the magic box and the programming thereof was on HIS scope of work'.

"There it is, right there! In black and white."

"Okay! You got me. Now what?" He said, disgusted.

"We get the interface, connect it up and program it. Piece of cake. My system's got holes in it waiting for us to plug into. I'll help you through this." I was only cheating a little bit. The problem was one I'd faced before, and I had some files that would get up and talking, then it was a matter of him deciding what data he needed. "Order the box," I said.

That's why some days I felt tired when I got home. Actually, I stopped by the park office to find Cindy perched on a chair, laptop out, tapping away, stopping to chat with Helen and Charlie, then back on the keyboard.

"Wow!" I commented. "She's busy! Homework?"

"Kinda-sorta," she said, smiling. "Doin' a little project for my English teacher. A short story."

"Oh," I said. "Is this one going to show up at another college English department?"

Charlie chuckled. "She told us about that. I find it amusing."

"Amusing is a good word," I laughed. "Astounding works, too."

Cindy looked up, grinning. "Ya'll are talking about me like I'm not here."

"Oh, we know you're here, sweetie," Helen said. "We're just talkin' about some of the happy things about you."

"I know," Cindy answered. "This is fun stuff. I get to make things up."

"DO I get to read it before you turn it in?" I asked.

"I hope you do," she said. "You're a better spell-checker than Microsoft." Giggle.

Charlie said, "Yes, son, when I was a young lawyer, the very best you could hope for was a secretary that could take your henscratch and make you sound intelligent."

"Those are getting hard to find these days," I said.

Another giggle from the little redhead. "Ummmmm! I'm gonna tell Mizz Sara you said that..."

General laughter.

"Yeah, there ARE exceptions. But Sara seldom does correspondence for anybody, what with email and word processors, and you'd be scared to read the writings of some of my co-workers, knowing that people who can't spell or write any better than that are building industrial facilities." I laughed.

Cindy was shutting down her laptop. "Salads for dinner?"

"Sounds good to me." I looked at Helen and Charlie. "You want to join us?"

"Thanks for asking, Dan," Helen said, "But we'll have dinner ready when we get home." Judge Charlie's housekeeper took care of her eighty-odd year old employer and his sixty year old wife. "We'll have to plan something, though."

"Yessir," Charlie said. "We'll do that."

Cindy and I went to our trailer. She dropped her backpack and we rested for a while sitting on the sofa with me listening to her school happenings and then telling her my hurdles. Dinner almost went away when she swiveled from beside me to be seated on my lap with her arms around my neck and her lips fastened to mine.

"Don't get ideas now, boy," she giggled. "I have my heart set on something stuffed in a big Portobello mushroom."

"That makes me soooo sad, little redheaded girl, that I come in second to a mushroom..."

"And the Sommers sisters..." she tittered. The Sommers sisters, the owners and operators of our 'salad place', were kind and friendly to us, the strange pair that came in so often.

"Okay, cutie. I'll take the back seat to the Sommers sisters." It was five o'clock. When we walked out to the truck, the wind was brisk, biting, but there were streaks of orange tingeing the western sky as the clouds broke up.

Despite the truck's heater rapidly taking the chill out of the cab, Cindy was belted right up against me. As soon as I got the truck into 'forward', I took that arm and draped it around her, gaining me a purr from my little kitten. She reached forward, punched up some music, then took that hand to pull my arm tightly around her.

"Life is good, Dan," she said.

"Indeed it is, princess," I said.

The next day Cindy came home with an application to take the ACT in February. That was easy enough, except for the part where we decide which colleges to send official copies to. I flipped the phone open.

"Hi, Dan," Jim answered. "I expected you to call."

"Then you know what I'm going to ask."

"Why don't you two come over for dinner tomorrow. I think Ann's doin' Purina Baptist Chow."

"Huh?" I blurted.

"Casserole, man! Casserole!"

"Yeah, okay! Sorry! I'm punchy from the project today."

He laughed. "So you're tellin' me that a trailer full of engineers is worse than five hundred and sixty-three middle schoolers."

"Your middle schoolers don't yet have the opportunity to screw up a two hundred and fifty million dollar construction project," I said.

"Yeah, but they would if they had a chance."

Cindy said, "Hi, Mister Jim. We'll be there!" loud enough that Jim heard it.

Jim laughed. "It's fortunate that we marry women who have better sense than we do, ain't it?"

"Yeah. And tell Ann that it won't match hers, but I'll bring a pie for dessert."

"Dan an' Cindy're bringing pie," Jim said to Ann.

"That's good," Ann said. "Just make sure he brings Cindy!"

Jim said, "You heard all that?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'm now defined by the personality of my wife."

Jim laughed. "As are we all, Dan. We married above our station, Dan."

"Yeah. We got lucky, didn't we? Okay, We'll see you tomorrow."

"Tell Cindy that I'm gonna want to talk to her tomorrow in school."

Cindy's ear was pressed against mine. "'Kay, Mister Jim," she chirped.

We hung up. She wrapped her arms around me and whispered, "So what were you tellin' me about simple foods? A pot of rice, some vegetables? Indian?"

"I think we can fake some of that. I worked with a couple of Indian engineers on the last project. We talked."

"I can see that happening, love," she said. "That's something I learned about you that I find very attractive."

"What?" I asked.

"Well, I can't remember you not talking to somebody. When we go out, you find friends easily. And you know, look at all the stuff we've shared. You love to do things. And you love letting ME do things. You want me to be ME!"

"And at the end of every day, I want you to think that 'me' is a part of 'us'."

Her face was inches from mine, her green eyes connected to my blue. "Dan," she said earnestly, "I stopped being 'me' and became part of 'us' when you admitted you loved me."

Some basmati rice, a little bit of exotically spiced chicken and a handful of vegetables made dinner for us. She hovered as close to me as she could in the tiny kitchenette. I talked about the ideas that my old buddies Sanji and Asif had shared in our conversations about mommas and grandmothers cooking for families and I added little pinches of spices to try and replicate the tastes of an Indian restaurant that they swore was almost home cooking for them.

When the meal was over, I looked at her. "Well?" I asked.

"Interesting," she answered.

"Worth further research?"

"Yep! Maybe they have one of those restaurants in Mobile, for the weekend..." she smiled. I remembered that only a few months back she'd had her first try at Chinese food.

"So you're looking for an adventure this weekend?" I looked at her across the little table.

"Maybe a little one. But what I REALLY want..."

"What do you REALLY want, kitten?" I smiled.

"What I REALLY and is for us to find another of those fantastic evenings with an orchestra and something REALLY special. Haydn. Bach. You know ... Make a big weekend of it."

"I think that would be perfect, little one. We need to do a search. Anything within six or eight hundred miles. We can fly that far with no problems."

" ... can fly that far. And if we have to do instruments, YOU can do it." She sounded confident.

"Yeah, just remember, sweetie, that ol' plane isn't a REAL instrument platform. No punching fronts and getting crazy. No ice."

She leaned over the table, her chin propped in one hand. Her eyebrows raised above those green eyes and there was a twinkle. "So we need a good day to leave, and if we get stranded a day because of weather..."

I chuckled. "So you're, like, planning for our plans to crash..."

"Nah..." she smiled. "I'm just sayin' that if they were to come apart, it wouldn't be soooo bad..."