Chapter Seventeen: Part One
Carrie noticed that Kate had stalled whilst buttering her toast, completely lost in her thoughts and gazing blankly into middle distance. Watching Kate with an impish grin, Carrie gently took the butter knife from her hand, saying, ‘Hey Dee? Aren’t the Myers back in town tonight?’
‘Is that today? I thought it was next weekend, or the one after.’
Kate poked her tongue out at them, laughing, and thanking Carrie for her now buttered piece of toast. At Dominique’s request, Kate was on the VIP list for tonight’s gig.
Dee’s phone made a noise and she glanced at it, typed out an answer and sent her response, never missing a beat in the conversation. ‘So what do we know about who is attending tonight?’
Kate answered, ‘Not a thing, other than it’s wall-to-wall with serious VIPs. When I was talking to Edison last Wednesday, he said it should be a run-of-the-mill kind of affair.’
With strong tones of irony, Dee said, ‘So stay on our toes then.’
‘Always,’ Kate smiled.
Talk moved to the mundane things that needed discussing and coordinating before they broke for their respective duties. Kate and Dee double-checked every logistical detail they could to ensure no avoidable surprises came up during the afternoon or evening. Paula was now apprenticed to Carrie, and they spent their morning in ‘mise en plus’, preparing everything that could be prepared ahead of time. They took time to mine through their ingredients, making sure that everything was as completely ready as it could be. Luka and Melissa were already in Dominique’s kitchen and going through their own preparations. Tonight, they were serving nearly two-hundred and twenty guests, including two heads of state, ambassadors, consular officials, current and retired government officials, the mayor, and many of the state’s wealthiest power brokers.
At midday, Harold arrived to collect Kate and take her to the spa. Dee and Carrie took the to-do list out of her hands before shooing her out of the apartment with big, self-satisfied grins. Dee, of course, had briefed the girls at the spa on the purpose of Kate’s visit, and they primped and polished Kate to perfection. Aside from a few broken calls and his text messages, Rick and his parents might as well have fallen off the back of the planet. Kate ached to see and touch him again.
Harold delivered Kate to Dominique’s estate a little after four o’clock in the afternoon. Dom opened her door and offered his hand, greeting her with a warm hug. Seeing her eyes darting about, he leaned in with a mischievous glint in his eye. ‘They’re not due in until roughly quarter after five. You will have to remember to breathe until then, Catherine.’
‘Katie!’ Natalie called out as she walked towards them. Kate was unprepared for the strength of her reaction to Natalie, realising at that moment just how much feeling had developed between them. ‘I just heard from Madison. Apparently, her son has been dwelling on a single, central topic for their entire time away. Can you guess who that topic might be?’ Seeing the question forming, Nat added after they’d hugged, ‘She called me as they were boarding for their last leg back a couple of hours ago. Edison should be picking them up soon. Judging from the look on your face when I mentioned him, he has been a recurrent theme in your mind too. Come on, Nita’s inside.’
Natalie winked at Dom before taking Kate’s arm and guiding her to a side entrance. Dom smiled, turning to greet his next group of guests as they pulled up.
Nat said, ‘So, Katie, I’ve heard you’ve been a very clever girl since we last spoke. I don’t pretend to understand the finer nuances of what you and your men did, but the overall impression is that some brilliant innovation and problem solving took place. How big would a one-third array be, do you think?’
Kate kicked her brain up a gear. She had to around Natalie. ‘About two-and-a-half by four metres in total footprint I guess, why?’
‘I couldn’t help but notice that there is a group of slightly awkward looking guys working around a curtained-off area in the back paddock that would comfortably contain what you described,’ Natalie said, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.
Kate’s eyes lit up. ‘Where? Show me. Please, Nat.’
In response to Kate’s enthusiasm, Natalie let her musical laugh free. Calling past Kate’s shoulder, she said, ‘Engineers! Nita, do you think we should bother Katie with that contraption out back?’
‘Kate, you look beautiful as always. Well done. Really well done. Edison says everyone is blown away by the work you all did. It takes a lot to get them to say the sort of things they’ve been saying about you guys.’
‘Thanks Nita,’ she said as they hugged.
Juanita continued. ‘They brought the prototype over yesterday afternoon. The silly buggers blacked out the whole neighbourhood last night with all their lights.’ Rolling her eyes, she said, ‘It’s okay though, Dom just charmed the neighbours until they thanked him for the chance to light their candles.’
Natalie snorted. ‘One of these days, we’ll have to pay someone to resist him, just to teach him a lesson.’
‘They’d have to be deaf and blind to stand any chance of that! Short odds that he charms them anyway,’ Juanita said with mock anger.
‘I have missed you both so much.’ Kate laughed. ‘Now, you have my baby sitting in a field without me. Please?’
Natalie and Juanita giggled as they took an arm each, leading Kate through the house and rear garden. As they walked towards a large curtained object in the middle of a turfed field, Kate recognised the engineers who had been present at Rick’s lab, and called out greetings to each of them in turn. They responded to her with a stammering deference that bordered on worship.
Natalie whispered to her with a giggle, ‘Catherine, remember you are not an engineer right now. In their eyes, you’ve proven yourself to be more expert than they are in their own fields, you’re the guest of honour, and you are, at the very least, the boss’ girlfriend. You’re standing here in a spectacular evening dress with everything about you, from your hair and make-up down, diabolically crafted to captivate and seduce all who see you. You’re confusing them.’
Kate smiled at Natalie and modulated herself, acting more ‘the kind boss’ and less a ‘bull-pen-colleague’. She barely contained a giggle as the men in front of her responded with almost palpable relief, and Nat winked to her a few moments later.
Seeing the head computer whiz, Kate walked over and asked him how the prototype had been running. He apologised, explaining that he was under instructions not to tell anyone until tonight. His face said almost everything Kate needed to know, but feeling a little wicked at using her feminine wiles in such an obvious manner, Kate pouted slightly.
He picked up a ruler and smiled as his finger tapped on a specific part of the numeric scale. ‘This unit ran today with only ¾ of the final surface area and pulled our full surface target at 55% humidity, with a bad dew point and a solid overcast for most of the day.’
Kate computed the implications of what the man told her, unaware of Natalie and Juanita watching her intently. She blinked as she arrived at the answers she was calculating. ‘Fifty plus litres with three-quarters of the array? That makes one hundred and twenty plus under ideal conditions and seventy-five baseline … Four-hundred and eighty to five-fifty for a full scale? That’s almost fifteen percent over projections!’
The man cleared his throat noisily as he nodded theatrically.
Winking mischievously, Natalie leaned in and said to him, ‘Don’t worry, we all saw you never say a thing.’ The poor fellow, dazed by Nat’s smile, almost simpered in place before catching up with reality. Still grinning, Natalie looked to Kate. ‘Is that good?’
Kate said, ‘It means it works. The design is already viable to install in the field. Forty-six litres for this scale and these conditions was the minimum required to make it effective in the field. In good conditions, the enhanced production should regularly be close to double today’s output, if not slightly more.’
The young computer whiz nodded, gazing at Kate as if she were a goddess. He knew that he would have stammered for half an hour, and still not come close to summarising the project’s details so neatly.
The phone in Juanita’s hand buzzed. She looked at it and said, ‘We had best get our Katie back to the house. Edison just let me know that he is about ten minutes out with a special delivery on board for Katie.’
The women giggled at Kate’s excited response. ‘Nope,’ Natalie said to Juanita, ‘I don’t think she’s thought about him once the whole time. Probably can’t even remember what he looks like.’ Receiving a huge smile from Kate, Natalie said, ‘Go to him. You deserve each other. Be as foolish as you want to be.’
Juanita asked, ‘Do you remember where the library is? Rick is heading that way, probably even before Edison manages to stop the car. Go on, get out of here!’ she urged. Kate smiled at her friends, turned, and walked back to the house as fast as decorum and high heels allowed.
Natalie and Juanita watched her hurrying back to the house, along with many of the men there, all admiring the way she wore and filled her dress. They bade the engineers and technicians farewell and strolled back to the house, enjoying the comfortable breeze as the late-afternoon sun broke out from behind the clouds.
~~~~~