Waves and Light: Opposites Attract Series

by Elizabeth J. Merrill

  “Ah” I retrieve the shoes from the drawer and place them on the floor under the suit and blouse I hung outside her closet. I cock my head to the side trying to imagine her in the outfit. My cock twitches a bit. Down boy. “That’ll work. I think you should wear this with your pearls. Okay?”

  “You’re the stylist; I’m just the mannequin.”

  I snort. “You’re a lot more than a mannequin. I just want all the old men at the luncheon to notice you so they can begin to appreciate your brilliance.”

  “Sure, sure,” she waves her hand dismissively. “When do you want to leave?”

  “I think it’s worth springing for the parking garage, so we can leave at 11am and be there by 11:30 when all the mingling starts. I’ll just call you when I get in the car and you can meet me downstairs like we did Saturday. And don’t run. They won’t give me a ticket for sitting outside the building for a few minutes.”

  She gives me a two finger salute. “Aye, aye captain.”

  I chuckle. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say as I grab my backpack and leave the room.

  Chapter Eleven

  B.D.

  “Still think he’s gay?” Wendy asks me in a I-told-you-so tone.

  “Yes,” I look her in the eye. “He just asked me where my Manolos, as in Manolo Blahnik, pink, kitten heels were! What straight man knows what any of those words mean? Seriously, I only found out who Manolo Blahnik was last year, from you. And kitten heels? Pink?”

  “Just because you’ve only ever met uncultured, Neanderthal men before doesn’t mean all men are like that. He’s clearly interested in fashion. There’s nothing wrong with that. And it doesn’t make him gay. It makes him the son of a model and buyer for Neimans. I met lots of guys like him when I was modeling in New York.”

  “Whatever. It’s not just the fashion thing. He brought me a wash cloth and a toothbrush after I barfed. Most men aren’t that empathetic. He seems to not care about me, but he remembered to take my homework. When he goes through the line at breakfast, he remembers to grab a blueberry muffin for me because they usually run out by the time I get through the line. I don’t think a “player” would do those things, so obviously you’re wrong about David. Someone has him confused with someone else. Honestly, I wish he were straight. He’s smart and cute and considerate. I haven’t managed to find many of those.”

  Wendy gave me a concerned look, “just be careful. Maybe he’s a straight guy with a few skills that you obviously attribute to gay men. And he might just be on good behavior until you wander into his trap, then what will you be?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know--trapped.”

  “That’s right trapped.” Her six-foot self loomed over me, and she squinted her blue eyes at me. “Just be careful.”

  I gave her my most reassuring look. “I promise to be careful, but you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  *

  I carefully applied the three shades of eye-shadow to my lids, just like Felicity showed me. Then I lined my lips with liner and filled it in with the mauve lipstick. Wendy had already twisted my hair into a loose chignon at my nape then she’d stuck a zillion bobby pins in it and sprayed half a can of hair spray on it. I didn’t realize that people still used that stuff. My carefully constructed to look elegant, but casual up-do wouldn’t collapse into a pile of frizzy curls anytime soon. I looked myself over critically and decided I looked like a stranger—a pulled together, professional stranger—hopefully no one would realize I was just an impostor in designer samples.

  A glance at my phone told me it was 10:55, and David could call anytime. I grabbed the pink clutch that matched the Manolos and headed down to the lobby. Just as the elevator door opened, my phone buzzed with a text from David saying he was on his way from the parking lot. I strolled across the lobby in the dignified manner that I felt the outfit and hairdo deserved and casually tripped down the steps arriving at the sidewalk just in time to see David’s red Honda rounding the corner. He parked in the no parking zone and risked a ticket by coming around the car to open my door. I nodded appreciatively.

  David looked stunning. The navy blue Armani double breasted suit emphasized his broad shoulders and narrow hips. His dark hair was pushed back from his face on the sides but a few, stubborn locks curled over his forehead. His crisp white shirt and blue and purple paisley tie made his eyes pop. I had to make a conscious effort to breath and look away just to get in the car. I swear my heart stopped—he was that gorgeous.

  David

  Just as I rounded the corner, she stepped out from behind the limestone planters that lined the sidewalk and the sun caught her auburn hair and created an actual halo around her head. I have never seen someone so beautiful. The suit fit her perfectly—that’s what custom tailoring does for you. Off the rack clothing would never fit her. Her figure was too voluptuous to be common. The burgundy of her suit and the pink shell underneath set off her coloring nicely. And her pearls gave her skin a luminescent glow. I nearly hit some clueless freshman crossing the street, because I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I stopped right in front of her and was drawn from the car toward her almost without conscious thought. Before I embarrassed myself, I opened her car door and helped her inside. She nodded to acknowledge my actions as if they had been some kind of gentlemanly act, not the results of some beauty-induced haze. B.D. really had no idea how beautiful she was. I took a moment to stare at the console and catch my breath. Once I had driven a few blocks I had recovered enough to engage in polite conversation.

  “You look lovely,” I told her.

  “Thank you,” she replied. “You’re quite handsome yourself. The color of your tie really suits you.”

  “As does the color of your suit. It really compliments your skin.”

  “Thanks.” She cleared her throat, and we sat there in silence for a few more blocks. Then I tried to break the silence in the lamest way possible.

  “The heat may be breaking. It’s only supposed to get up to 93 today.”

  “Yeah that’s what I heard. After the summer we had, I thought for sure it wouldn’t cool off until October, but we might be lucky this year.”

  “Lucky…yeah.”

  More silence.

  I decided to offer some helpful advice. “Try to meet as many of these guys as you can. You don’t know which company will be the one you might like to work for in a few years. All the major high-tech companies have representatives at this luncheon…IBM, AMD, TI.” I chuckled. “All the three Initial Companies are represented.” How lame…”And all the other high tech companies like Google, Amazon, even some gaming companies like Hurricane in addition to lots of professors and researchers.”

  “Sure, that’s what you said.”

  “I met the gamers that gave me my summer gig at this luncheon.”

  She nodded. “You told me.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be really impressed with you.”

  “Well I’m not sure about that, but…it will be nice to meet them.”

  “Sure they’ll be impressed with you. Why wouldn’t they be? You’re beautiful and…smart, so smart.”

  She smirked, “I’m not sure if beauty is the leading quality one looks for in a physicist.”

  “Beauty is always a bonus.” I stopped at the gate going into the parking garage and snuck a peek at her again and couldn’t stop myself from leaning towards her. She leaned into me. It was like we were magnets of opposite polarity and couldn’t help be drawn to none another.

  Then a loud knocking on my window broke the spell.

  “Are here for an event, sir?”

  “We attending the Fineman Luncheon.”

  “I’ll park your car.” He opened my door, and I hopped out quickly hoping to get around to B.D.’s side to get her door, but another valet was already helping her out. I noticed he held onto to her hand a little longer than normal.

  “Here’s your ticket.” I handed the valet my keys and sprinted around the car to B.D. I put my hand on the small o
f her back and extricated her from the other valet’s creepy clutches with a glare. He cleared his throat and looked down.

  “This way,” I waved my hand toward the banquet room.

  B.D.

  David literally escorted me to the luncheon. I honestly thought he had just planned to give me a ride, but he ushered me around the banquet with his hand on my back. He introduced me to everyone he knew including the head of development at Hurricane games and two engineers from IBM and a developer from Google. He made sure I got a plate of hors d ’overs—caviar hors d ‘overs—my favorite. He ensured that the roving servers brought me a non-alcoholic drink that looked like a cocktail so I wouldn’t stand out as under age. And finally he got us both seats at the IBM table even though I know he wanted to sit at the Hurricane table because he wanted to see if they had any more small, physics-related programming jobs like the last one.

  Our table boasted the two IBM engineers, Bob King and Bill Anderson, Dr. Hrezecovic, Dr. Baker, and another Fineman scholar and his date from A&M. Bob King was the engineer-liaison with the Fineman foundation. He had been an IBMers for 38 years. They nabbed him straight out of college. He sported a polka-dotted bow tie and an impressive handle-bar mustache. I thought IBMers couldn’t have facial hair, so I asked.

  “That’s the old IBM—we’re much hipper now. And” he said in a stage whisper with a wink, “they always let me have my mustache.” According to Bob, IBM was the best company in the world to work for. They had great pay and benefits plus a killer stock purchasing plan. Just like all the other high-tech companies they had a coffee bar and a game room.

  He was still a bit wistful for the old IBM though. “We used to have IBM park on the west side of Burnet. The park had baseball diamonds and tennis courts. They had grills and picnic benches. We’d have little league tournaments and cook outs, but IBM sold their park to make way for the Domain. People had stopped coming to the park with their families anyway, but IBM still had lots to offer “young people” and even new families.”

  Bob also regaled us with my favorite kind of jokes—corny ones. He started with a computer joke, “What do you call a singing computer?” …” A Dell.” And he also told a physics joke, “A Higgs-Bosun is hanging around the back of a Catholic Church, and when the priest notices him loitering, asks him to leave. The Higgs-Bosun replies, “Are you sure, without me, you can’t have mass.” I couldn’t help it. I giggled.

  Bill Anderson looked more conventional in a navy suit with a red stripped tie. He was more interested in talking to Dr. Hrezecovic than wooing us. Apparently he was the lead developer on IBM’s Watson health system—essentially high-powered medical decision-making software. In testing the system was 30% more accurate at diagnosing patients than live doctors, but the system still relied on humans to input some of the data regarding things like swelling, redness etc. “Relying on human doctors to input data clearly introduced error in the system though,” explained Bill. “Doctors seem to think every pregnant woman has dangerously swollen ankles in her last month of pregnancy. They put their observation into Watson, and he always diagnoses the patients with preclampsia. That kicks in a whole round of tests. If we could find some objective way to measure swelling and compare it to swelling from prior appointments, we could get more accurate results.”

  I explained, “Dr. Hrezecovic’s AI work could objectively measure swelling and compare that measurement from appointment to appointment to see if the patient was retaining water abnormally. We could measure the wavelength of the light bouncing off the patient’s ankles. Data like this could reduce the C-section rate and save lives.” I nodded at Dr. Hrezecovic. “Honestly, the applications for this research seem almost unlimited.”

  We also got to meet Hunter Caldwell, the A&M Fineman scholar, and his date, Alison Fields. That’s when I realized that while I had met almost all the professional people and most of the researchers at the luncheon, I hadn’t met any of the other Fineman scholars even though a dozen attended the luncheon. In addition to the UT scholars, scholars from A&M, Texas Tech, and North Texas attended the luncheon. There were 30 Fineman scholar programs at public schools across the country, and four of them were in Texas. I would love to get to know other Fineman scholars, but it was like David was purposely steering me away from the other scholars.

  David

  Good thing that creep Caldwell brought a date, so I didn’t have to worry about B.D. getting sucked in by his aw-shucks-good-‘ole-boy shtick. I had managed to keep her away from Trace, Gibert, and Mangiotti even though those dickwads were clearly trying to move in on her especially after they introduced her as the new Fineman scholar from UT and not just my date.

  And B.D. did a much better job schmoozing the old timers than I thought she would. The character from IBM absolutely beamed at her when she laughed at his corny jokes and even the serious one seemed impressed when she explained the wavelength experiments she’d been running in Dr. Hrezecovic’s lab. I guess Dr. Hrezecovic knew what she was doing when she gave the lab assistant gig to B.D. I just wanted the position because it looked impressive on my resume, but B.D. seems genuinely interested in the work. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in the work, but B.D. had clearly drunk the kool-aid—she’s not just phoning it in. She’s proselytizing about all the applications of Dr. Hrezecovic’s work. I wouldn’t be surprised if B.D. didn’t end up with a few of her own patents after her work in the lab. And frankly Dr. Hrezecovic needs someone like B.D. to sell her work to the private sector. The good doctor may be a genius but she’s too shy to schmooze and when she talks about her work, the private sector guys are too grounded in the real world to get it.

  I relax a bit and take a bite of the salad. MMMMM. That’s the other great thing about this luncheon. The food is one notch above the normal luncheon fare. The salad isn’t the standard lettuce, shredded carrots, and cherry tomatoes, but rather some diametric combination of sweet and bitter, soft and crunchy that’s delicious and it’s just salad!

  B.D.

  Wow! I haven’t tasted food like this since the unfortunate turn of events ended our family’s monthly foray into the world of fine dining.

  I turned to Bob. (He told me to call him Bob.) “I just love the combination of fennel, pear, and pecans. Don’t you?”

  “Huh?” Bob replied.

  “Fennel, pear, and pecans,” I motioned toward the salad. “They’re great together. I especially like that they’re using pecans and not walnuts. We’re in Texas after all, and they have a better texture than walnuts.”

  “Pecans. Right. I like pecans in…salad.”

  I nod. I guess Bob was not much of a gourmand.

  An awkward silence descended as the wait staff spirited away the salad plates, but it was broken almost immediately by the arrival of the main course. I went for it and ordered the steak instead of the salmon or the vegetarian medley of grains and seasonal vegetables. Give me a break. Steak’s always the way to go. And like the rest of the meal, this plate was a notch above the rest. To begin with, it’s not just steak, but a porterhouse crusted with pepper and served on a peppercorn cream sauce. The sides are horseradish mashed potatoes and seared garlic Swiss chard. Yum. I dug into the plate like it was my last meal. I couldn’t help it. It was so much better than the swill they served in the dorms or the meals my culinarily challenged mother whipped up. I must have made a bit of spectacle of myself, because Bob piped up by way of explanation.

  “It’s nice to see a woman that’s not afraid to eat. Girls today just pick at their food.”

  I nodded. “Thank you,” but slowed down from starving orphan to Marine-at-boot camp speed. I noticed David was delicately eating his salmon like a poster child for Miss Manners; he even placed his knife and fork carefully on his plate to indicate, Miss Manners style, that he was done even though he had left at least a quarter of the meal—even the salmon—on his plate. I couldn’t care what David “always-make-a-good-impression” Slade did; I came to a luncheon, and I was damn well going to eat
lunch.

  Still I could make conversation. “How was the salmon?”

  “Excellent. Sometimes it gets over cooked and comes out dry or they put some heavy sauce on it, but the dill sauce on this was light and complemented the salmon perfectly.”

  “Good, maybe I could try a bite,” I replied. Before he could say no, my fork darted out and stole a bite of his salmon. David looked on in horror as I moaned a bit. He was right. The sauce was good and complemented the salmon. It was almost as good as the steak.

  David recovered and asked, “I notice you had the steak. How was it?”

  “Fannnnnttastic! I loved it. The steak was medium rare—just the way I like it. And the peppercorn cream sauce really brought out the …meat flavor in the steak.” I sighed. “I love steak.”

  David smirked at bit. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’ll file that away for future reference. B.D. loves steak.”

  “I’m from Texas. There’s nothing wrong with loving steak.”

  Still with that smirk that brought out his dimple, David replied, “I never said there was. Ahh…And here’s dessert.” He turned in his seat and perused the dessert cart. True to form, he picked out a lemon tart. I, a true master of the dessert cart, went for the jugular. I got a flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce and whipped cream.

  Just like the rest of the meal, it was just a notch better than the standard fare. The chocolate cake was dense and moist and intensely chocolate, but that flavor was further set off with some kind of spice—allspice maybe. The whipped cream was also flavored with something like Chambord which enhanced the flavor of the raspberry sauce that dripped artfully down the sides of the cake. I closed my eyes and moaned as I rolled the first bite around in my mouth. David gave me a reproachful look, but Bob just laughed.

  “That good?” Bob chuckled while he gave me a side-long look.

  After I’d savored a bit more I shot back, “better!”

  Bob shook his head and chuckled some more. “It’s worth it to fight traffic just to see you eat.”