“Speak of the devil,” said Dianne, whose ginger coloring betrayed her middle age with the start of a few wrinkles around her eyes and a bit of sugar in her cinnamon-colored hair.
Marching through the second set of air-lock doors, Sam approached like a thunder cloud in a $10,000 charcoal pinstriped suit. With middle-aged good looks that only the best plastic surgeons can provide, he exuded charisma . . . until he opened his mouth. “If Jess is dropping out of college, I’ll give her up for adoption.”
Colby whispered, “I see why you were worried,” before Sam was close enough to hear.
Not wanting to escalate Sam’s mood, Regina forced a neutral expression on her face. “She’s twenty-one. That’s too old to terminate parental rights, but I understand how you feel.”
“How I feel? How I feel is that guttural and sincere patriarchal desire to break the toes of my boots off in her underperforming butt.”
Regina could actually see the vein in his forehead throbbing through a blanket of Botox. He was livid, well beyond the level of perturbance Jess should be causing him.
He continued, “If she’s transferring schools again . . . or majors—”
“She’s not,” Regina said in her best soothing voice, embarrassed that each of her team members was watching them. “She sent me the bill for next semester—same school, same declared major.”
Sam eyed her like she was a card dealer in Vegas, and she had just won three hands in a row. “Do you know what news she’s breaking?”
Regina shook her head. “She seemed at ease in our text conversation, though, so I doubt it is serious.” It was a lie, but one worth telling.
“We’ll see,” he said while tapping on his watch phone. It was old-school technology, but Regina contended he loved it because it made him feel like a spy in the year 2000. Sam had always argued that cell tower communication was safer than satellite-based since the attempted invasion in 2043. It had been nearly a decade since Earth had banded together to fight off a wave of two dozen alien attack ships. After a minute, he looked up.
“You wouldn’t have come straight to see me solely about Jess’s message,” Regina said in the same soothing tone. “That could have waited until lunch. What else brought you to my lab?”
Sam’s jaw clenched and released, one of his relaxation techniques. It almost never worked. “I won’t be taking a lunch. Unfortunately, neither will you or Velasquez.”
Sonya groaned, which elicited a look of annoyance on Sam’s face.
Regina had been looking forward to eating a vending machine turkey salad all morning. Something must be wrong with Phase One.
“We have a problem with Phase One,” Sam said. “Chauncey wouldn’t tell me what was wrong over the phone. He insisted I come down to the factory immediately. I’m bringing you and Velasquez from your team, Gullivan from engineering, Carpenter from biotech, and Braxton from nanotech. If we can’t figure it out before five, I’ll decide who to fire, and we’ll fly back to hear what outstanding news Jess has to share.”
Sonya looked at Regina with a flash of concern. The expression seemed incongruent on that face, like if the Mona Lisa stuck out her tongue. Regina shook her head slightly and tried to convey that Sam’s threat was more bravado than sincere. “An hour in the air, and thirty minutes on the ground leaves us a little more than four hours there.” She gave her husband a cynical look. “And that’s if we leave right now.” It was a little before eleven. Regina hated disruptions to her day, but a trip to the island was not bad as far as diversions go. The team Sam was taking was full of scientific rock stars, who would stand a good chance of solving whatever problem they encountered in short time. Besides, it would be fun to watch Carpenter strike out trying to flirt with Sonya on the jet.
“We are leaving right now.” Sam turned and started walking out, talking over his shoulder as though he expected the two of them to follow. “Tell Kristine what you want for lunch as long as it can be delivered to the post at our airfield in twenty minutes.” He nodded at his attractive thirtyish assistant who had waited outside the doorway, wearing a professional skirt suit.
Regina had worried about her husband’s hire until she saw the way Kristine always looked at Sonya compared to how she looked at Sam. “I’ll have a Rowdy Burger with bacon and a side of shallot crisps.”
Sam looked back at her incredulously.
“I’m counting this as a vacation – closest thing to one you’ve taken me on this summer. So, I’m eating like I’m on vacation.” Regina smiled with satisfaction when Sam turned his head forward and said nothing. He hated fast food.
“Same order for me,” Sonya said to Kristine. “And I want a coconut shake, too.”
Regina mouthed, “Me, too,” when Kristine looked at her. Truth be told, she had been craving a burger for several days, and a big, greasy Rowdy Burger sounded perfect.
Exactly twenty minutes later, Regina sat next to Sam in the front passenger seats on the Jenkins jet, as the service crew wrapped up systems checks with methodical precision. Savoring the first juicy bite of her bacon cheeseburger, Regina glared at Sam as he spread a cloth napkin across her lap. She felt his eyes linger on her body, and felt defensive. She had put on a few pounds over the summer. “You’ve worked my team around the clock all summer – I’ve had to survive on food from vending machines and have had no time for the gym.” She was still slender by any objective standard, and steamed a bit at the judgment she felt. She snapped off another bite like a challenge for him to say something.
“You look perfect,” he said, anxiously looking back at a file open on his lap.
“What’s that?” Regina asked as Carpenter and Braxton walked to the back of the plane, having finished their pizza in the hanger.
“Summaries from the patent attorney.”
Swallowing the bite of deliciousness, Regina said, “You were supposed to meet with the attorneys all afternoon, weren’t you?”
Sam nodded, trying to read his file.
“You probably made the whole emergency up just to get out of that meeting.”
Pulling off his reading glasses, he said, “You’re goading me, aren’t you?”
“Perhaps.”
“Is this about the burger?”
“Only a little.” Regina raised an eyebrow. “You were pretty hot with me in front of my team.”
Sam sighed and nodded. “You’re right.” He could be a perfectionist and a blowhard with a short fuse, but those weren’t the only traits that had won Regina’s heart. Behind the Botox and the high-end shirts was a brilliant man who had taken her all around the world. “I’m going to pay for the napkin in your lap, aren’t I?”
“With diamonds and a long talk.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Weak, late, and lacking in bling, but I’ll take it as a down payment.” Regina slurped her coconut milkshake loudly.
“I know we need to talk. Once Phase One is out and Phase Two is ready for production, we’ll can spend two weeks anywhere you want, and talk about everything.
That was a better start, thought Regina. Perhaps their marriage would survive the Space Toilet. “Anything interesting from the lawyers?” Slurp.
Visibly annoyed by the slurping, Sam said, “The Estate of Todd Malcolm has challenged several of our nano and biotech patents.”
James Braxton, a slender man and the youngest on their team at around twenty-six, with an oversized push-broom mustache under a prominent nose, said from several seats behind, “Are you talking about Todd Malcolm the astronaut? He wrote the treatise on nano ethics. I studied his methods and theories in grad school at MIT. Shame he was lost.” Braxton worked his way into the open seat behind Regina.