“Water would be fine, thank you.”
Oliver walked into his kitchen and returned carrying a glass of water with ice cubes, just as his doorbell rang.
As he opened the door, he welcomed, and then introduced, the history professor who would help determine the veracity of the map.
Professor Anderson was an older man who had spent most of his life in the History Department of the University. He looked over the map with zeal, and then set up a microscope.
He leaned over and studied intently. “My word, Oliver, this paper appears to be the right age. Of course, I can’t be certain until we chemically analyze it, but the weave and coloring appear to be correct for a document of this age.”
He unfolded a piece of paper that he had removed from his pocket. “I had a friend in Kentucky send me a copy of Stuart’s
signature from an authenticated document.”
They all looked at the two signatures and they looked quite similar. Ruth could sense Oliver’s excitement.
The professor spoke. “If this turns out to be real, well then, the three of us have been looking at an extremely valuable historical document. It could bring hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.”
“We have a long way to go before we have to worry about that,” Oliver told him.
Professor Anderson looked at Ruth. “Young lady, we are in the presence of a genuine Civil War battle-historian. I can think of fewer than a dozen people who would have recognized the potential value of this map. There is little identification of the locations indicated on the map, but by observing the notes on the troop placements, Oliver recognized which battle the map referred to. I’ve been trying to get him to teach a course on battles of the Civil War in my department,” he turned to look at Oliver, “but he keeps turning me down. Maybe you can help me encourage him?”
Ruth was overwhelmed, not only by her misjudgment of Oliver, but also by the suggestion that she would have any influence over his decisions. “We’ve just met, but I’ll try.”
Oliver laughed and waved the professor off with his hand. “If you need someone to teach truck repair, I’m your man. But teach history? I don’t think so.”
“Well, I keep hoping,” the professor told them as he turned to leave.
When they were alone again, Ruth rather spontaneously asked Oliver if he would like to go for a walk.
“I’d love to, as long as you don’t mind being seen with a diesel mechanic,” he said, sounding only half-joking.
Ruth shook her head at her own blunder. “I am absolutely embarrassed to tears that I acted that way. My father spent nearly all his working career repairing jet aircraft. When I said those things to
you, I was also demeaning him. I was mortified when I realized how I was behaving. He’s always been a great father, husband, and provider for our family. My parents raised me with a great set of values, but I seemed to have lost some of them. Oliver, I am so sorry I acted that way.”
Oliver smiled. “I won’t bring it up again, if you won’t.” “It’s a deal.”
They ventured out, and on their walk they talked a lot about family and relationships. It was quite evident that family was very important to both of them. Ruth observed something else and decided to point it out to Oliver.
“I’ve noticed that you haven’t lit up a cigarette,” Ruth said.
“I quit, Ruth. The cousin who sent me that map is my age and he has smoked as long as I have. He was just diagnosed with lung cancer. He’s having surgery in a couple of days to remove most of his left lung—I may not be the brightest bulb in the lamp, but I figure that’s a good enough sign for me.”
He shook his head. “It was murder for a couple of days, but I kept a picture of a diseased lung on the front of my locker at work, and on my refrigerator at home, to remind me why I wanted to quit smoking.”
Ruth didn’t really know what to say to that, and they walked in silence for a while until Oliver spoke again. “I was thinking about you the day after my party. I told you I was going to have beer there and you didn’t seem to think that would be fun. I ended up having stomach flu earlier that day, so I didn’t drink. And you know what? It wasn’t fun. With me not being drunk, my friends didn’t seem so funny. One of the girls got so drunk that she fell and dumped a full glass of beer on one of my favorite Civil War books. When I pointed out what she had done, she just laughed and said, ‘Guess I’m drunk.’ I was angry as hell that she thought getting falling down drunk and ruining a book was laughable behavior.”
He stopped walking and looked at Ruth with a serious
expression. “Also, I have to admit, I was angry at you, because I didn’t want to like you, but you were right about the drinking.”
Oliver was quiet for a moment as they resumed walking. His serious face turned back into a smile. “Well, Ruth, you may have to hang out with me now, because I may not have any friends left.”
“I’m sure you’ll find new friends.”
Oliver stopped walking and turned toward Ruth again. “As long as you are the first of my new friends that will be fine.”
They resumed their casual pace. “I’m worried that we don’t have enough in common to build a relationship on,” Ruth told him. “Let’s just start by seeing if we can be good friends. I do think
we have shared values when it comes to family. That could be an excellent cornerstone for building a relationship.”
They had dinner that night at Mama Michaela’s Restaurant. It was served family-style on long rows of tables so everyone got to know each other. They had a wonderful evening sitting near a couple who obviously were very much in love. You could tell from the way they kept looking at each other and touching.
The guy was kind of shy, but told the funniest jokes about his software career. His girlfriend was from someplace in New Mexico. She told them many stories about growing up there and the hard times she and her family had. Everyone agreed that families got through the worst times by sticking together.
Oliver fit right in and Ruth felt very comfortable spending time with him. After dinner they went to a ballroom in Seattle for dancing. Neither was a great dancer, but the fun quotient was off the scale as they danced the night away.
When Oliver finally walked Ruth to her apartment door, she surprised herself. “I know we got off to a bad start,” she said, “but I really had fun tonight and I hope to see you again.”
As an answer, he put his hands on either side of Ruth’s face and kissed her with one of those kisses—the kind you read about in romance novels.
“I had a fun day as well,” he said.
Ruth felt certain she was experiencing enough fireworks exploding in her head to fill an entire Independence Day. She wrapped her arms around Oliver and held him as tight against her as she could.
They parted ways, but Ruth could hardly sleep that night thinking about Oliver—and that kiss. She kept thinking—if his kiss was so explosive, what would making love to him be like?
The next day Ruth’s first class started at ten o’clock. She arrived to find a bud vase with a single yellow rose on her desk. The attached card read Thanks for the great day—your favorite diesel mechanic.
A few weeks later Ruth would receive a phone call that had the potential to destroy their growing and joy-filled relationship.
Chapter Three ~ Anna and Michael
ANNA SHARED AN OFFICE with another engineer and when she arrived the first day she was proud to see a placard at the entrance to their office with the words Anna Cardozo— Software Engineer on it. She was told her double major in electrical and software engineering were great majors, but she hadn’t realized that companies would actually come looking for her, instead of her looking for them. After being raised in her small, southern New Mexico town, the Seattle area was certainly “the big city” for a small- town girl like her. It was taking some time for her to get adjusted to living there, especially to the weather.
It was cloudy every day, the temperature rarely got above
fifty, and it wouldn’t get much warmer until summer. March in New Mexico would be in the seventies and sunny almost every day. Anna’s apartment was about one-mile from her office, though, so she could walk to work, regardless of the weather.
The group Anna worked for was developing a new electronic device for aircraft. She and her officemate, Michael Levin, were designing the software interface between the hardware components and the user interface. In the trade, it’s called firmware engineering. They would also be responsible for testing the device’s motherboard
to make sure it was built properly and worked as intended. They would be developing tests for all the software the department wrote as well.
While Anna worked for the company directly, Michael was hired as a consultant. He had done this kind of work since he was in high school and had developed many types of products, from dishwasher controls to satellite communication controllers. Michael was just under six-feet-tall, very nice looking, and five years older than Anna.
Anna learned that her immediate supervisor, Paul, wasn’t happy to get an engineer right out of school for his eight-person engineering group. She knew that she would have to work as hard as she could to keep him happy. The others in the group were nice people, though, and pleasant to work with.
Michael had been especially nice to Anna. The first day she arrived he told her he had prepared an outline with the things she would need to learn. “Plus, here is a book on math algorithms,” he said. “It will help get you up to speed with the rest of the group. If you have any questions, just ask.”
Anna found that Michael was easy to work with, and he made her laugh. He seemed to make very funny jokes at his own expense. He was also an expert at malapropisms; after a member of the IT department gave them some absolutely worthless advice, Michael shook his head and told Anna, “We’re certainly going to illiterate him from our memories.”
Another time, after recommending a book to her, he said, “If you study this material you will easily reprehend it.” He would drop words like that with a perfectly straight face—at first she thought he was serious, but soon realized he did it on purpose to make her laugh.
There were two other women in the group, and Anna started going to lunch with them. They let her know what to expect from different group members. No one seemed to like Paul. The general consensus was that his supervisory method consisted of tons of criticism and very little guidance.
Michael approached her with a project. “Anna, here is an outline of a module to code by the middle of next week. Our group will get together to review it. Code reviews are conducted to try to head off problems before running the code in an actual device. It also assures that the company’s software quality standards are met.”
Anna did the work on time, but she was a nervous wreck the day of the code review. It took place in a small conference room with whiteboards on the walls. Every time someone read a block of her code, Paul would find a reason to criticize it. Each criticism was accompanied by him saying, “If you had more experience, maybe you would know better.”
After fifteen minutes of this, Michael gave Paul a look that was so cold it could have caused an entire ocean to freeze. In a strong, stern voice Michael suggested, “You’ve made your point, Paul.”
Paul slowed down the criticism, but Anna still found it humiliating.
When they got back to their office Michael told her, “Your code was excellent. Don’t let other people’s remarks upset you.”
“It’s not that easy for me. This is my first job and I want to look good.”
In a dramatic and ominous tone, Michael said, “Paul has a code review in two-weeks. Be sure you’re ready for it.”
Two-days before they went into Paul’s code review, Michael handed Anna a copy of Paul’s code with lots of little notes and symbols on it. The symbols came from the book on mathematical algorithms that Michael had given her when she’d started. Anna spent a number of hours studying the annotated code.
When they had all assembled in the conference room, Michael read the first six lines of Paul’s code. He walked over to a whiteboard and turned back to face the group. Michael looked directly at Paul. “I’m not sure what you were trying to do, Paul. You only need two lines to get this done.”
Michael proceeded to write the two lines on the whiteboard. Anna knew Michael was very good at writing code, but the two lines he put on the board were brilliant.
Paul still found a way to stick it to Anna, though. “With all your experience, I’m sure that’s easy for you.” Paul then looked in Anna’s direction and gave her a disparaging look.
Michael ignored him and continued. “The next twelve lines are written in a way that uses way too many machine cycles. Code like this can drastically slow down processing.”
Michael then looked at Anna. “Anna, please come up to the whiteboard and show us how this code could be written more efficiently.”
Anna looked down at the code Michael had given her before the review. Applying what she had learned from the book on algorithms would enable her to compress Paul’s code. Paul was glaring at her, practically daring Anna to challenge his work. She looked back at Michael, who was smiling at her. One of the other women in the group nodded to her.
That’s all the encouragement she needed. Anna was nervous as she walked to the whiteboard and started writing, after she had the first line completed, she glanced back at the group. The other two women had huge smiles on their faces. Paul wasn’t even looking at her. She compressed Paul’s twelve lines of code into four and sat down.
“Thank you, Anna.” Michael looked over the lines she had composed.
“That was excellent,” Warren, the engineer sitting next to Anna said, as she sat down.
Twenty-six-year-old Warren was the quietest engineer in the group. Of average height and rather plain looking, he spoke with a rural Midwest accent.
Michael had said he was the best software engineer he had ever
met. The word Michael used was “genius” when he described Warren’s ability when it came to software. A compliment like that coming from Michael was huge praise, to say the least.
Warren then said to the group, “If there are no objections, I’ll show how the next block of code could have been written more efficiently.”
Anna couldn’t remember details of the rest of the meeting, but she sure remembered how quiet Paul was.
At the end of the meeting Michael said, “Paul, before your next code review, why don’t you stop by and see Anna, Warren, or me and we can review some better methods of writing code.”
Paul mumbled a quick thank you as he headed out of the conference room.
When Anna got back to their office she thanked Michael.
“It’s not me, Anna. It’s you. I’ve been doing this kind of work since high school. I’ve probably met hundreds of engineers. One engineer was an old-timer who’s probably long gone now. His name was Gerald. He was taught engineering course work in the Army Air Corps before and during World War II. He was the most gifted, most natural engineer I have ever met. Whether it was internal combustion engines, aerodynamics, electrical systems, hydraulics, structures made of metal, wood, or plastic—he had the ability to develop an abstract idea of how something should work. This enabled him to invent, build, or repair almost anything. The vast majority of engineers you will ever meet will never engineer something beyond what they learned in their textbooks.”
He tapped the side of his head as if in illustration. “A natural engineer thinks of engineering at a high level of abstraction. This allows him to go beyond the textbook learning that he was trained with. His abstract thinking also allows him to develop concepts that have never existed before. It requires a mind that is capable of huge amounts of abstract thought. That kind of thinking is something you are born with—it can’t be taught—Anna, that’s how you think.
That book I gave you on algorithms would take most engineers months to learn. You learned it in a few weeks.”
/> “Michael, it wasn’t that difficult.”
“That’s what I’m telling you.” Michael wore a joyous expression on his face. “It wasn’t that difficult—for you, Anna.”
While Anna was pleased at Michael’s thoughts about her, she still felt like she was a beginning engineer who had amazing amounts to learn, just to become minimally competent.
When Anna went to the cafeteria for lunch that day she didn’t see any of her usual friends. She was about to return to her office with her lunch, when she saw Warren sitting by himself next to a window that had a great view of the lovely green space next to their building.
“Hi, Warren,” she said as she walked up to him. “May I sit with you?”
He looked up at her and smiled. “Please, sit down.”
Anna hadn’t noticed Warren’s warm smile until now. He always seemed to concentrate on his work with such intensity, that he didn’t smile.
He told her that he started working for their company right after college and that he loved software engineering. “I love creating applications for devices the average person will find useful,” he said. “I knew how terrible Paul’s coding skills were. But, I thought I was the only one who thought that. When you and Michael pointed it out, I knew that I could finally speak up too. Now, we are going to turn out a brilliant device with code that will execute like lightening. I live for that.”
Warren took a bite of his lunch and glanced out the window at the lovely view. He swallowed quickly. “Oh, my God! Look at that gorgeous Great Blue Heron taking off from the marsh.” Then, he leaned in to whisper. “I also live for birding.”
“I’m from southern New Mexico,” Anna told him. “You should come down our way. We have amazing, brilliantly-colored birds that you can see right from our backyard. My older sister, Chela, used her first paycheck to buy a feeder to put out there. Since then I think she is up to eleven different types of feeders. She also has nesting boxes for various birds placed around our yard. We call that part of our backyard Chela’s Aviary. She joined a birding club and goes on hikes with them. Every year she goes out and does some kind of bird counting with them.”
Finding a Soul Mate (Meant to be Together Book 1) Page 23