Chapter 8: Kay Comes Out to See My House.

Thursday morning I started the day following my usual routine. Things were progressing in the expected fashion and I stayed occupied with my work. What was unusual though was the constant smile on my face as I loosely planned out the evening in front of me. Unlike last week I didn't have any emergency calls and it suited me and my plans very well. I didn't want to be forced to call Kay and cancel this evening. I needed to make things move along as I knew I only had Sue for another week.

My planned work was covered early in the day. I would normally have done some work on a software program I was developing but I needed to do some shopping for tonight. I went to my local store where I knew I could get everything I needed. Not for the first time I wondered why it was called a grocery store, I mean there was so much more there than just groceries but that was just the ramblings of my mind. I didn't really expect to come up with an answer to the question other than tradition.

Once at home again I started putting things together for the meal. I made up the salad and put it in the refrigerator to chill. I had bought mushrooms to include but not everyone likes them so I put them in a separate bowl after washing and cleaning them. I figured to have them on the table so we could help ourselves. I washed a pair of good sized potatoes and started them baking, I liked my potatoes done and figured they would be ready when Kay got here and we sat down to the meal. I debated about another vegetable but then figured with the salad I didn't need one. Finally I put the steaks in plastic bags with the marinade I used and moved them to the refrigerator too. With everything in the kitchen ready for the evening I went to my bedroom to get myself ready. I showered and shaved then dressed in a pair of comfortable shorts and a polo shirt. This was intended to be a comfortable meal for both of us, almost a working meal, not something fancy.

By now it was a quarter to five and there was nothing to do but wait for Kay. I had checked the weather and it was supposed to be a comfortable evening so I planned on making it an outdoor meal. I lit the citronella torches but if we were too bothered by bugs we could eat in the screened porch. I moved the things I needed to the outside kitchen area, including moving all the refrigerated things to the chill box I had out there. When I moved the steaks I used a trick my mother had shown me as I turned them over. Using a rolling pin on the steaks in their bags to help tenderize them and get them to absorb the marinade. I set the outdoor table and checked on the potatoes, turning them over. The last thing I did was put on some music. I had a fondness for the movie "Fantasia" and had the sound track on CD; I started it playing and switched on all the speakers including the ones in the back yard.

As far as the house and dinner was concerned, all was ready. Physically I was ready and I mentally prepared too, going over in my mind all the arguments I would use to convince Kay this wasn't charity I was offering her; it was a solution to our problems and really was in both our best interests. I really needed her help. She had to have new living arrangements, either a new roommate or a new place to live and neither was likely in the short period of time she had. I had to have someone I could rely upon to watch over my household, including the cats and I had to have them before the end of next week at the latest. Keeping the house clean wasn't difficult with only me living there and when she moved in (if she moved in) I didn't think it would be that much more difficult.

The doorbell rang and when I opened the door Kay was standing there. "I see you found the place okay."

"Yeah, it wasn't hard. Once you told me which bus ran by your street it was a no brainer."

"Well, come on in," I said as I shut the door and led her to the great room. "They've never done it before but I don't want to chance Sammy and Sandy making a break for it. Usually they hide whenever someone new comes to the house. I don't even know where."

"I had the lunch shift and came straight from work, that's why I'm dressed this way. I could have dressed a little nicer if I had taken the time to go home first but as you must know it's the opposite way from the campus."

"Don't worry about it, you're dressed just fine. This isn't anything fancy. The whole purpose of you coming out for dinner tonight is so you can see the house and we can talk about you possibly moving in here. Before we go on please tell me you haven't ruled it out. I mean I'll still give you dinner tonight and take you home after but I really want a chance to talk about this with you."

"I haven't ruled it out but I'm not agreeing to anything just yet. I'm really nervous about my housing and my time is running out. I have to do something by the end of next week. I have to put my half of the rent together with Robin's and give the months' notice or I have to pay the rent and start right now to figure out what I'm going to do about the following month. I'll have to pay it all on my own if I don't find a new roommate."

"Good. All I want is a chance to convince you. I think if you listen to me, in the end you will agree with me. Let me start by giving you a tour of the house. You don't have to agree to anything for that do you?"

"Okay, I'd like to see your house. Lead on, it's your show."

"Well, as you can see the house has a great room with a large dining area." I brought us to the kitchen. "It's a good sized kitchen and when I modified the house I also replaced the kitchen appliances. I originally intended to have a live-in cook and housekeeper and wanted the new appliances so she could cook for me and for parties. I quickly found live-in help wanted too much money for the little work I had for them. I wasn't having indoor parties too often, mostly they were outdoor. Now if I have an indoor party or even a large outdoor party, I just hire a caterer for the event and it costs me a lot lessoverall than the full time cook and housekeeper."

"These are nice appliances." Kay said as she looked them over. "These are way better than I'm used to seeing. My mom is a good cook and would love to have these to work with. She wins prizes all the time at the county fair. She taught me to cook and appreciate good tools in the kitchen."

I smiled and thought to myself, this is a selling point I hadn't even considered. "I'm glad you like them. If you do come to live here you can use anything here in the kitchen any time you want to. Let me show you the side of the house I use most." I led her down the hallway to my office and bedroom.

"My bedroom is against the back wall so I'm as far away from the street as I can be. As a bedroom it's nothing special. It's a king sized bed but the cats still manage to squeeze me off to the side each night or at least it seems that way. A highboy, a dresser, a free standing mirror and a couple of comfortable chairs fill out the room"

Kay looked at it all rather quickly. "The bed is made; did you do that or the housekeeper?"

"She changes the sheets and cleans the room as part of what she does every week but day to day I make up the bed myself. She also cleans the bathroom every week, at least on this side of the house," I said as we walked through the bathroom into my office. "Sue is only here two days a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. She does the major cleanings on Fridays and I stay out of her way."

She was looking around the office and asked me. "Do you have four different computers or are all four of those big monitors connected to one and what is that in the corner?" She was looking at the modular rack I had for the computer and for testing.

"Since computers are the heart of my work, I've got the best system I can afford and I usually change things out every other year or so. The rack in the corner is what I use for both my working computer and to test out components when I'm building something for a client. My working computer is kind of a hybrid. It's made up of PC components but I have it set up like a main frame. The four monitors are all connected to my working computer and I can have them working together as one big monitor or I can use them to look at different things at the same time. It really isn't anything special, the set up just looks impressive."

Kay agreed it looked impressive and commented on what she saw. "It's more computer than I've seen outside of one setup we have at school and I know, besides what we do for course work and projects, we do work for NASA on that one, so I'm impressed."

"To me it's just one of the things I use for my work like a mechanic uses a wrench. It's what I need to pay the bills."

"I guess a simple laptop wouldn't do the job, would it?"

"Oh I use a laptop too; I have a few of them. One is for my casual use, one I use for my work at a customer's location and one is a backup. If I have to travel out of the local area for work I take all three with me, just in case."

Kay looked at me shaking her head in disbelief. "I thought I was making a joke."

I smiled as I led her out of the office. "Let's go look at the other side of the house."

As we walked from one side to the other I kept talking. "This side doesn't get used much. I told you it has two bedrooms and they are about the same size but I almost never use them. Oh, I use the back one for storage but I really need to go through the things there and clean it out. There are queen sized beds in each room but only the front one is made up. Sue usually doesn't have to do much on this side but I know, if I suddenly brought someone home who needed a room, they wouldn't find much dust and the linens would be fresh. The difference is the bath is accessed from the hallway, it isn't a walk through like I have between my bedroom and office."

Kay looked at the front bedroom and seemed to goggle at the walk-in closet. "This bedroom has more closet space than my whole apartment does and the bed in here is newer than mine."

"The back bedroom is a mirror image of this one." I told her as we walked back towards the great room. "Are you ready for dinner? I still have to cook it, you know. I don't have a kitchen full of chefs to make the steaks the way you do at work."

"I'm ready, is there anything I can do to help?"

"If you don't mind, you can get glasses from the cabinet over the counter to the left of the sink and put ice in them from the freezer. I already have the pitcher of ice tea in the outside chill box. How do you like your steak, red in the middle, pink in the middle, brown in the middle or burnt to a crisp? I'm cooking them on the gas grill outside and I have the table set up out there too."

"Glasses and ice, I can handle. I prefer my steaks pink in the middle. Uhh, do you let the cats go outside? They're peeking around the doorway and I don't know what you allow them to do yet."

I noted her use of the word 'yet' and smiled, things were starting to look up and I hadn't even gone into my heavy sales pitch. "They can go into the screened porch but not outside, and they know that. They're too hard to corral and get back inside if they escape."

"Okay, sorry kitties, but you can't go outside, I'm wise to you."

"I know you work in a steak house but they don't serve steaks marinated the way these are, I hope you like them. We also have baked potatoes and chilled salads." While the steaks cooked I moved the salad, the mushrooms, the dressings and all the other things from the chill box to the table. I turned the steaks and ran inside to get the potatoes from the oven along with the condiments. "If you want something besides iced tea I have some sodas as well."

I set the steaks on the table with the potatoes and we sat down to eat. "I don't normally eat this well two days in a row. I mean I eat but I find full meals like this have me putting on more weight than I want. Still this is a special meal and I'm trying to butter you up."

"Iced tea is good for me. Usually I'm serving steak dinners not eating them so this is nice. It's very comfortable out here; I don't remember the last time I ate outdoors."

"This is what I try for when I have my barbecue pool parties. They normally start about midafternoon and run into the evening. The bigger ones I have catered and the caterer brings everything with them but they use my grill. The smaller parties I do myself with a little help from my housekeeper. It works well but I think part of that is I don't do them too frequently and I mix up the people I invite to them. Mostly I do them for company big wigs, they're the ones who approve my bills but at least once a year I have a big pool party for the lower level company IT folks to show them I appreciate them as well."

"This is a good steak, what did you marinate it in?"

"It's only an Italian salad dressing mixed with garlic powder. I soak the steaks individually in plastic bags and turn them over at least once, but I like the flavor it gives the steaks."

"Italian dressing? I never thought of using a salad dressing for a marinade. I'll have to tell my mom that trick. I'll surprise her with knowing something about cooking she doesn't; at least I don't think she does."