Chapter 58

Cindy's Turn:

Do you have any idea how much fun it is to walk into a conference room with your husband, meet a bunch of clients, and pass out my own card that says "Cindy Richards, BSEE"? A lot of our clients already know me, but there're always a few.

Dan passes out HIS cards, I pass out mine. Dan's forty-three. I'm fifteen. They expect HIM to be an engineer. They have no idea of why I'm here. One old guy, maybe late fifties or so, looks at my card. Looks at me. Looks back at my card.

I'm dressed in my 'job' togs: Jeans, tiny little safety-toed shoes, nice cotton shirt, not exactly 'white-collar', but neat. It's just me. It's been me ever since I had a choice in what I wear to work or to school.

The old guy looks. Finally, "Cindy Richards, forgive me for asking, but how OLD are you?"

"Fifteen, sir," I said.

"This card says you're an engineer. BSEE. Engineer."

"Sir, so does Auburn University," I retort.

"Told ya!" the senior staff engineer said. He's who we've been working with. He already knew me and Dan from a meeting at their corporate headquarters. This is a regional office. I'm unknown. Not any more, I'd venture.

"Fifteen..." the old guy said. "I have a grand-daughter who's fifteen. If she had a business card it would say something about nail polish." He looked at the senior engineer. "Bob, I'm just a poor ol' lineman. It ain't right you should be jerking me around like this."

He laughed, along with Dan. I just sort of smiled. "Gordo," he said, "She's for real. Worse'n that, there's another one on their staff that's a whole year older."

"That would be Nikki Granger. I have pictures, if you want to see."

Victor, the senior engineer, looked at Dan. "Dan, how about you show Gordo that slide show?"

Ah, the slide show. It's a bit more than the standard 'This is our company' slideshow we use for marketing. This one's more of a "Let's Take a Zoo Tour" show. It features ALL of us doing our thing, me, Nikki, Susan (in the middle of a substation with seventy thousand dollars worth of test equipment behind her), Tina, and of course, the guys. There's a bit about our projects, including some blurry pictures of the railgun, our high energy experimentation lab, Terri and Rachel(!) with the 3-D printer, Susan at the lathe (complete with the 'Hello Kitty' sticker), in short, a whole lot more 'happy' there than the normal marketing thing.

We 'wasted' a half an hour with THAT slideshow, then segued into the actual "We're a serious business" show. Honestly, if you want MY opinion, we had 'em with the first show.

"Biggest regret," Dan told the crowd, "is that since she's only fifteen, child labor laws keep her from doing much field work."

Gordo said, "You know, we bring the occasional school tour through. If Cindy wants to visit a substation, as long as she's escorted and doesn't put her hands on the equipment, I'll go with 'er."

"Oh, you get me or one of the other engineers," Dan said. "She can't drive yet."

"Or fly," I said sadly. There were a couple of pictures of us and our little Cessna in that show. "I guess what I really want to do is see the equipment employed in the field. Dan tells me that you can engineer things and make them impossible to work on."

"Don't I know it," Gordo shot. He smiled at Victor. "We learn, don't we?"

"For pete's sake, Gordo, that was twenty years ago."

"It's still there, Vic," Gordo replied. "Every time I send a crew out to that station we have to worry about it." He turned to me. "Cindy, darlin', I'll show you what happens when engineers mess up."

"I don't want to mess up," I said. "Dan says the wisest thing I can do is listen to the people who do the work."

Our clients smiled, Gordo especially. "Don't ruin 'er, Dan," he said.

"I've watched Dan at work," I said. "He'll take care of you."

We went out to the substation we were replacing. It's like taking a kid to a zoo, at least for me. So many interesting things to see. It's almost sad, though, some of that equipment is nearly sixty years old, still bumping along, doing exactly what it was designed and installed to do.

On the way back, Dan and I had a very educational discussion about the difference between what was good enough in 1960 and what's good enough now. There's a big difference, you know. I know. Had it explained to me by a guy who knows his stuff. I can look at it, though, and knowing what it does, I have all these numbers and formulae running through my head, terms that define its capabilities. It's hard to ooh and ahhh when you're running fault current capabilities and clearing times.

"Ruint you," Dan laughs. "Most females your age are balancing the costs and benefits of those nail polishes."

I can drop out of speaking good English, too. "They be all like 'He goin' wit' Maria, but she not even HOT, an 'when he get tired a'her, I'monna git'im' you know what I' msayin'?"

"You're scary."

"To other people, maybe. To you I will always be your little Cindy who lives for your attention." Of course, a thought tumbled off the stack in my head. "You heard Nikki's new nickname at the lab?"

"Nope."

"Sticky Nikki. She was talking to Doctor E and Doctor E commented that Nikki's proposal was 'sticky'. So 'Sticky Nikki'."

"Or Tricky Nikki. Her name yells for rhyme and the commission of felony poesy."

I giggled. "Or Ubikky Nikki. What about me?"

"You. Well, Stoney says you are the sister woodland nymph to his Johanna. And the fact that you try to trick your poor ol' husband by concatenating 'ubiquitous' tells me he's right."

"I can be quite happy with that." Stoney and Jo brought an interesting pair of personalities to our little group. The connection between them and Kara Sevinsky predated Kara's integration into the community, on one hand, and on the other, the three of them formed a musical entity that has been validated by a musical symposium at the university.

Following that bit, Stoney played the part of poor pitiful engineer quite well, saying "Worked all my adult life as an engineer, and what do I get recognized for? Playing a banjo."

"Stoney plays that 'poor pitiful engineer' part well but he ended up with a redhead. I personally think that's a mark of success." Dan punctuated his statement by idly toying with MY red hair.

We're headed to a hotel for the night. It's one of those necessities of the business. We could've driven home today, but it would have us on the road until after eleven, and just wasn't worth the trouble, not for BOTH of us. Of course on the previous meeting with this bunch, Dan went by himself and he DID drive home that night. He says I'm incentive. I say he's got a thing about redheads in hotel rooms. That's quite all right with me. I have a thing about Dan whenever and wherever I can get him.

For Round Two I'm astride him, telling him that this is the most perfect thing in the world, and I'm not restricting such a comment to that obvious protrusion that connects him to me. I'm thinking that of all the stories I know about men and women and their relationships, the one between me and Dan is the most perfect. Of course, I have sisters who would argue the point, and that bothers me not in the least.

We got up the next day. My knees didn't even wobble. I'm used to this now. Believe me, though, there's a vast gulf between 'used to it' and 'bored with it'. I'm used to it, familiar with it, and looking forward to each chance we get. Sometimes I overhear conversations between other girls, have even gotten dragged into a few, and I come away sad from most of 'em. Dan's right. The sisters are right. Love gives to pure sex an aura that those others are missing.

So we're driving along the road home and I'm following the big electrical transmission lines paralleling the highway. I can look and tell things about them. 230,000 volts is one. That's big clumps of power. I giggle.

"What's funny?" he asks.

"Just had a thought cross my mind. How many fifteen year old girls know the voltage level of that transmission line?"

He chuckles. "I am sure of only one, baby."

Along the road, the transmission line ended up in the inevitable substation. "Pull off here. I need further education," I ordered.

"Yes, ma'am," he laughed.

It didn't take long. Once you know what the big pieces do, it gets easier. Dan and I pointed and talked about the various strange-looking components. He asked a few questions of me, what I thought about the interactions of the pieces in making the big 'whole'. Engineer's world. Now it's mine.

And Dan looks at me questioningly when I twist and wrap both arms around his bicep.

"Beats the daylights out of stacking underwear at WalMart, baby," I tell him.

"I always thought so," he replied. "Somebody's got to do that, too, but I'd rather do this."

"We CAN do this," I said. "We want to do it. We learned how to do it. So we do it."

He glanced over at me, smiling. "Sort of like finding a purpose in life."

"Many purposes," I said. "Loving and being loved, that's one. You and me. And our crazy family."

"Don't go near the philosophy department," Dan said.

"Oh, sometimes I wonder ... So busy trying to figure out things that people forget to experience them." That was a fairly common theme of some of my lab discussions, as in "Okay, you calculated the effects. Now let's watch the hardware perform."

"Interesting thought, sweetness," he said.

"Like Kara. It's almost like a sociology paper, or maybe a little novelette, watching her since she got here."

"She reminds me of you in a lot of ways."

"Not TOO many ways, I hope." I giggled. Dan's mine. I know he's mine. He knows he's mine. EVERYBODY knows he's mine, and it's not in some weird 'master-slave' fetish way. We just belong together. I say that just to let you know how I expect the words I just enunciated to be received.

"Yeah. I'm gonna give up my life with a real life elf genius for anybody else," he replied. "I told you a million times that if I was given a blank page to spec out my dream girl, my wildest imaginations would never come up with somebody as astoundingly beautiful and perfect as you." He freed up a hand to squeeze mine. "No, I just observe her flowering, opening up. You did that before my very eyes, Cindy-poo."

"I didn't see myself do it, but I'm watching Kara. It's interesting."

He smiled. "I thought it was interesting, too, when it was you. At first, I think that you needed me to prop you up. Now I think I'm along for the ride."

"Nope. Still need you. You still prop me up."

"I still need you too, sweetness."

I smiled. I know he does need me. We complete each other. On the other hand... "Kara and Bert."

"Is that significant? Saying 'Kara and Bert'?" Dan doesn't miss much and one of the things he doesn't miss is that I don't put words together without thought of their meanings.

"Yeah, sorta," I said. "He's the only guy she's ever been seen with when she didn't have one or more female friends around. She's the only girl that he can speak with and not end up staring at his shoes."

"And they both play fiddle."

"Uh, Kara plays violin. Bert plays fiddle," I said.

"And since he's been hanging around, she's got him reading music with her."

Yeah, one of these days we're going to have to do a show. If we can get everybody here that plays, we'll have two banjos, four violins, a flute and a guitar and Nikki's triangle. And me and Rachel and Terri on recorders. In church they talk about in the psalms, where it refers to a 'joyful noise'. That would be us, except that some of the noise is concert quality and a couple of those people have stints as visiting college lecturers on their resumés.