Vision Ch. 03

There is finally sex in this one - just hang in there.

*****

Just when you can't stand it a minute longer Saturday comes like a prayer answered. A good night's sleep was all I needed. I wish I could sleep past 6:30 am, I need to. A few nice lazy days at home should square me away.

My garden is looking good; the plants seem to love Ed's chicken fertilizer. I can't thank the girls enough for tending this place. I don't know what possessed me to think I'd have time to garden being on the road so much, but it seems to be working out so far. Grass needs cutting though.

Where the hell is my brother? I've gathered the vegetables and herbs he claims he wanted the least he could do is pick them up in a timely fashion. I swear if I have to call him again there will be hell to pay. I answer and come when he calls I don't know why he can't return the favor.

I just know him, Harry and Uncle Jack are somewhere fishing; it's a good day for it.

11:30, not quite lunch time, an orange should tide me over, but first a small nap perhaps. Tunes in my ear, sun on my face, a good hammock, this is comfort.

Snatches of dream, daydream. Mr. Wilde - master of the averted gaze. Watching, always watching, with those large warm, changeling eyes of his I find that I don't mind at all. That dimple, which lends a boyish quality to even the manliest of men. That smile of his. Him twisting me like a pretzel and eating me like ice cream. Just passing gelato in the frozen section now makes me shiver.

Having given his life details only a cursory glance during the vetting process, I feel compelled to take a second look after having talked to Matt as I'm guessing I've missed something vitally important.

M.I.T. geek (which I knew), genius level IQ, one of the youngest experts in his field, did a brief stint in the Navy and then taught college for a while (a professor hmmm . . .) and formed his own company based on self-made security software all before the age of 30, dauntingly intelligent. I more or less know all of this. He has a twin brother somewhere. Damn, two of them.

Looks very good for 41. Hell he looks good for 31. And he listens when I speak, even when I ream him by email he's nothing but polite.

Though as tempted as I am we are going to have to have a brief conversation. I will not go there with him, not here, and I need to make myself clear. Especially after that scene in the elevator the other day. Him drinking me in with those sleepy eyes of his and lips that could tear me down.

The one time I yield to temptation . . .and for the life of me I can't stop thinking about it. And I'll never be able to, not with him staring at me like that every other time he sees me.

----

It's Saturday and I had every intention of working for myself today. I would love to be coding right now, but there seems to be some sort of cosmic conspiracy against my doing so.

Someone's unable to access the VPN from home and the world has come to a complete stop. Of course they can't access the VPN from home. They probably don't have the server address. I know it's small and we all wear many hats but shit I'm a CIO not Geek squad.

It is in my job description to work occasional weekends, but rarely is it enforced. If it's so important, why can't they go into the office? They don't have a problem with employees working overtime. I could see if it were a true emergency like the servers shutting down. I can't get Charlotte, Ted or Joel on the phone. I should be outside anyway. It's a nice cloudless beautiful spring day, just warm enough. Pancakes could turn it all around.

I take a seat at the counter. The extra strong coffee is much appreciated. I reach in my back pocket and take a look at the sheet and my mood shifts from groggily annoyed to anxiously curious. I quickly finish my meal.

This ain't so bad after all. I get to see where she lives. If I weren't sure she'd have me arrested for stalking and or harassment I'd have done a drive-by by now. At least now I have an excuse. Plugging the address into my phone's GPS I head out.

Tree lined streets, stately Old Virginia homes with manicured lawns and shiny cars. Not mere middle-class affluence, this is money. This neighborhood stinks of it.

I spot her tiny red car: 312 Camellia Lane.

At the end of long river-stone wall sits her stately and marvelously aged home. Sprawling front lawn. Open garage, a second car under a tarp, the requisite motorcycle.

I should have called first. Parking on the street, I make my way to the front door. Shady porch, potted plants everywhere, herbs I think. I ring the doorbell but getting no answer step to the open storm door, which is locked, and knock.

Looking through the glass door down the long wide hallway into the back yard I see a hammock gently swaying between two trees, a leg with a foot I well recognize is thrown over one side toes just barely brushing the tall grass. Going around the side I call out a hello. Getting no answer, I let myself in through the gate.

The vast back yard is huge and completely enclosed by high walls. We're barely through April but here it's warm and fragrant with an early blooming of magnolia, waxy sweet olive, the first roses and jasmine, you can see the river through the trees down in the distance it smells like home. One side seems devoted to flowers the other to vegetables.

At the edge of the garden there's a small greenhouse. In a hammock strung between a young pear and an ancient Magnolia lies she; looking very relaxed in a Star Wars T-shirt and cut-off shorts, arms and legs looking very smooth, downright silky. One arm across her stomach, the other curved lazily overhead, eyes closed. Hair parted down the middle, braided in pigtails, which turn under at the ends. The right pigtail looks almost blond at the tip, very young looking. She's wearing ear buds attached to an iPod shuffle clipped to her shorts.

"I've done my part, the vegetables are there in the basket. Now stop blocking my sun and get to cutting the grass, you are messing up my tanning session." She waves her hand dismissively.

Tanning? I touch her arm and she opens her eyes to find me smiling down at her. She blinks and frowns and slowly gets up and takes out the ear buds.

"Why are you here?" Sharpish.

"VPN assistance? Gina put in a request for you, said you needed to be able to access files from home."

She frowns. "I specifically went back to the office after the party and completed the draft summaries, if she'd bothered to check instead of waiting for them to be sent to her she'd have found them." She mutters something underneath her breath that sounds like lazy bitch.

"I'm sorry they called you out here on a Saturday. Why didn't they send Ted or Charlotte? You're the CIO for fuck's sake!"

Potty mouth, but my thoughts exactly. I shrug. "My people seem to be missing, and it was classified as urgent, I came."

"I've only just gotten the internet properly installed. I'm not sure I even want VPN here. There need to be boundaries and work/home life is a big one for me. I'll talk to her on Monday, 'perhaps' does not qualify as yes."

This from the woman who's been riding my ass about mobility and efficiency these last 6 months. She seems angry, though with the pigtails it's somewhat lacking in assertiveness. She's calming down and starting to look awkward; reaching down she takes the basket and puts it on her hip and waves me towards the back door. Directing me down the hall to the right she follows and puts the basket on the kitchen counter, opens the fridge and asks if she can get me anything - water, lemonade, tea, beer.

"Water please."

I watch as she takes a pitcher of ice water from the fridge. I take in the surroundings while she pours. It's homey. Already there's the steady thrumming sound of insects, the soft slam of the wooden screen door caught in the breeze. I like it here. The kitchen is modern and spare, pale aqua blue walls, white cabinets, gray tiled floor, and stainless steel countertops. There's a small red refrigerator. Six-burner stove, lots of counter and cabinet space, an overhead rack for pots and pans which, given her height, she cannot possibly reach.

She lives with someone? Lived with someone? Someone tall. Someone with money. Harry?

Escorting me to the living room she tells me to make myself at home while she freshens up.

The interior is luxurious yet homey and much more spacious than it appears from the outside. High ceilings with exposed-wood beams and rustic antique furniture. Thick walls, painted in warm creamy white. Doublewide hallway perfectly dividing the house.

Tons of pictures on the walls. Her with friends and family, dancing, splattered with paintball paint, drinking, smoking cigars. The progression of hairstyles and colors are humorous. There aren't many of her smiling, but it looks like a good life. I don't see a picture of anyone who looks to be a significant other.

I wander into the dining room, large round wooden table with 9 wide bottomed chairs upholstered in cowhide with nail-head trim, all under a riotous spiky glass chandelier.

Stepping across the hall I look around the living room. The furniture varies between traditionally modern and rustic antique. Tufted, gray leather nail-head sofas with yellow silk throw pillows, long filmy white curtains, large lamps with gray shades and yellow interiors, a large bouquet of wildflowers and roses on a side table.

Paintings on the walls. Stylish but not frilly. Bookshelves lined with hundreds of books. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Collette, Chairman Mao's Little Red Book of Quotations, Frances O'Connor, Alice Walker, Alexandre Dumas, Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto (well creased), Anais Nin, Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Gaines, Mein Kampf, Edith Wharton, William Faulkner, Mario Puzo - the Godfather (who reads that), Harry Potter (really), James Baldwin, Magic Johnson and Larry Byrd (for real? damn), Philip Roth, Oscar Wilde.

Stepping onto the front porch I sit and sip the water. There's a soft steady breeze. The grass is emerald green and very soft-looking.

I can hear her on the phone talking. I go back in. She finally re-appears fluffing her unruly hair which has taken on the texture of her braids.

"You've come all this way, let's not waste your time, computer is back here."

Damn the beast is stirring against my leg as I follow her delectable ass down the hall.

She stops two doors shy of the back of the house and ushers me in. An iMac, I inwardly groan. I don't know why I'm surprised it's what we use in the office. But true Mac people tend to have superiority complexes. The nuns that taught programming didn't think highly of Macs, and while they didn't ban us from using Apple products, it was hardly encouraged. It's a bias that stuck. To the point where it seemed I was the only one at college proudly sporting a Windows machine.

Well this has good and killed my hard-on.

I look down at her, eyebrow raised, a challenging twinkle in her eye. I sit down and pointedly look from her to her locked computer screen. Sighing and entering a phrase-like password she leaves me to it. It takes me all of 2 minutes. She was close to having it correctly configured just needed the correct server address.

Admittedly it's a nice machine.

Looking around the room it seems to be a guest room/office. The computer sits on a custom built desk with lots of shelves on top of it, there's a nice full-sized bed there are what look to be dressers built into the walls and a low plush tufted chair in the corner.

There's a ton of music on the computer and wireless Bose speakers to pump it out.

Eclectic tastes, Barry White (funny!) Cold Play, Bruno Mars, Coltrane, The Editors, Commodores, Kanye West, The Black Keys, Dead Maus, Daft Punk, LCD Soundsystem, Thelonius Monk, Joan Jett, Parliament, A Tribe Called Quest, Jet, Jelly Roll Morton, my great grandfathers music, Jill Scott, Lauryn Hill, Led Zepplin, Outkast, Seven Year Bitch (?) Prince (lots and lots), Django Reinhardt, the Cure. There's even a good deal of classical music, Rimsky, Korsakov, Chopin.

She comes back and looks at me expectantly. I tell her to sit down and try it out, and she does and looks genuinely disappointed when it works. Groaning she hangs her head and finally looks up at me like I've stolen her candy. I can't help but laugh.

She sighs. "Great, at least here I can drink on the job. You want a beer?"

I laugh and say 'sure' and follow her to the kitchen she invites me to have a seat on one of the stools at the counter and she opens a refrigerated drawer and asks if I'd like light or dark.

"I've got Guinness, or rather what the Irish call a meal. Westheinphaler, which is Belgian - nice light crisp and Brooklyn Weiss which is my favorite, somewhat fruity but not sweet, it's better on tap but it'll do."

I'm not much of a drinker. I go with the favorite and it's especially good with the wedge of orange. She pulls out a large bowl of mixed nuts, pulls her keys from her pocket and uses an attached bottle opener to open the bottles, shoots the caps across the kitchen into the trash, tosses the keys up on the counter, hops up on the stool, hands me my bottle, lifts hers in salute and knocks it back while giving her scalp a good scratch. This is a woman at home, comfortable and completely unfazed. Beautiful.

Paradoxically she seems as male as she is female, soft as she is tough. Downright ballsy, but also very tender, a compellingly attractive combination.

She offers an orange, which I decline.

Peeling one herself, she asks, "So Dax, where are you from? I can't quite pin down that accent of yours."

"My parents are from Mississippi and I was born in Texas and raised in New Orleans and grew up between the two, so I've probably got it bad. But the nuns believed in enunciation, so at least I'm understandable. I'm a transplant here in Virginia though. Like so many we were flooded out during Hurricane Katrina."

Her eyes widen. "Really?"

"I was with my parents at the time thank god. I'd only just moved back from California and began teaching down at Xula when Katrina struck. There was so much damage to the campus that the school pretty much shut down - students, staff faculty - disruption, devastation and chaos.

Pops cut his leg rescuing a friend and got a serious infection because of all the bacteria in the water, almost died of septic shock. Mom's a nurse and was able to get him through it but in doing so her blood pressure shot up sky high. My brother called in a favor with a coast guard buddy who came and had us airlifted to Virginia. We were fortunate.

In the middle of all that my parents began battling to get their insurance claims approved, it was just the end all be all. We were in the minority of families with flood insurance through the federal government, the premiums were not cheap.

From the moment my mom spotted the place and fell in love with it just after we were born he worried about the house and always said that one day there'd be hell to pay when that lake decided to grow legs and walk ashore. He and just about everyone else around there knew how poorly constructed and maintained the levee system was, but they'd ridden out so many storms that they just never thought the very worse would come to pass, not in their lifetimes anyway. And so, believing in being prepared for the worst, Pops bought the maximum flood policy available from the government program, $250,000 and faithfully paid his premiums on time.

The last major storm to come through there was Bessie in '65 and there were a few people around that remembered it and left. But most of us in New Orleans are born gamblers and so plenty of people stayed put even after they declared a state of emergency and ordered the evacuation.

Mom wanted that house and Pops grumbles but has never denied her anything she truly desired. So he also got about $200,000 in private homeowners insurance to cover wind damage. The government paid out the full amount but it took 4 years to get it settled, they wanted to claim that the damage wasn't from water, but wind.

Eventually it was determined by the Supreme Court that the Army corps of Engineers was negligent in its maintenance of the inner canal levee system. As for the homeowners insurance you have got to read the fine print. There was a lot that was not covered by the policy and it was the best that could be found.

Turns out, there was a $10,000 sliding deductible that had to be met before anything could be covered. I offered to pay it and they wouldn't hear of it. They dug into their savings, which is ample, but we're talking about fiscally conservative black people.

To say my dad is the cheapest man alive may not quite cover it. And after all that the homeowners insurance only paid out $45,000, saying that most of the damage was a result of flooding. Thievery like you wouldn't believe, government sanctioned at that.

The government tried to blame it all on the wind to avoid paying flood insurance and the homeowners insurance companies blamed the flooding to avoid paying homeowners insurance. It's a raw deal when you've played by the rules and done everything you're supposed to do and still get shafted.

They thought about relocating to Baton Rouge while the house was being repaired, but when they heard that the price of insurance was going up that was pretty much the end of it, $2,000 a year is one thing but $8,000, a 300% increase which going forward would no longer cover wind and hail damage, was and is just too much.

They were, disgusted and demoralized with Louisiana in the end. You can only imagine though the people who weren't prepared and didn't have the determination and resourcefulness of my parents in pursuing their claims.

Once I was done teaching classes I went out to Mom and Pops salvaged what precious little I could joined them here in Williamsburg, VA where my brother Max had pretty much relocated them more or less. They decided to retire and started over again at 60 and 63, it was a hell of a way to start.

Funnily enough even after everything they can't stand to be but so far away from water. Mom needs her supply of fresh fish. And though he complained to hell and gone about the work I think Pops misses being in the middle of the ocean on an oilrig surrounded by water.

Though Pops insisted on carefully studying the local topography maps and chose the highest elevation he could find in the area, other than the creek rising every now and then, there's little risk of flooding where they are now, though they get some serious storms. Williamsburg is at least above sea level but close enough to the ocean where he can do a little salt water fishing.

I do miss it though, there's nothing like hitting the quarter and some of the dodgier parts of town for some good music. I miss it a lot. I fly back every so often to help out with rebuilding efforts and its coming along slowly but surely down there, but it's not the same and sometimes I feel like it never will be.

---

The house is utterly still. My throat feels tight from talking. As I noticed in London, there's no pretense about her. She's been watching me, listening intently, occasionally nodding or shaking her head, gesturing with her hands.

"Xula, that's Xavier University right?"

"Yeah, my mom's alma mater. I went for a few years before ending up at MIT."

"You went to Xavier?"

There's quite the tone to that question of hers. "Yes."

"So that little St. Jude medallion's for real? You're Catholic?"

Knows her saints. Knows about Xavier. I'm starting to think she knows a little bit about everything. The woman is damned interesting to talk to. But where is she going with that question?

I answer cautiously. "Rather lapsed, haven't attended mass in years, but yes, why?"