Doing it All over

Chapter 11

Dad came home shortly after Mr. Blackmore left. I'd cleaned up the beer bottles and carried the remainder of the twelve-pack back up to my room and re-stashed it in my closet. I thought about telling Dad that I'd received tentative permission to resume my relationship with Nina but eventually decided to keep silent about it. After all, he might change his mind. People did that. I figured I'd give it a few days and see how things went before I made any mention.

I considered calling in sick for my job at the pizza joint that night. I'd been up most of the night worrying about the reunion with Nina and the beer I'd drank with Mr. Blackmore certainly hadn't helped my fatigue. But in the end my work ethic wouldn't allow me to call in on my first scheduled day back after my injury. I showered up and drug myself in.

My manager was very pleased to see me return and offered some of the same comments that Mindy had earlier that day. He became very displeased however when I told him that I'd been recommended for hiring at the hospital and that, in all likelihood, January 25 would be my last day working for him.

"That's really too bad Bill." He said sadly. "You're one of the best workers I've ever had here. Like you said when I originally interviewed you, you're not a typical teenager. I'd even offer to give you a raise if I thought it would help keep you but unfortunately I can't afford to match six dollars an hour."

I told him I understood and that I appreciated him hiring me and giving me a chance to prove myself and blah, blah, blah. I kept my amusement at his pathetic attempt to lure me to stay longer to myself. In truth I never much liked the man. He was a shameless exploiter of teenaged labor and he'd never bothered to offer me a raise before. But I also believed in not burning my bridges behind me. If things didn't work out at the hospital for whatever bizarre reason, I knew he'd hire me back in an instant. If I went in and wrote my resignation in urine on his wall, he might not be so inclined.

I was exhausted by the time I got off that night. When I got home I barely was able to remove my clothes before I fell into bed. Less than a minute later I was fast asleep; the first good night of sleep I'd had in a while.

The next morning I waited near the front of the school again. This day the sky had cleared of snow clouds and the wind had returned. The air temperature was a chilling eleven degrees at that time of the morning. The wind chill factor was probably somewhere below zero. You gotta love Spokane in the winter. I shivered and shook and felt the tears that were streaming from my eyes freezing on my cheeks. Finally I spotted Mrs. Blackmore pulling to the curb. Nina hopped out and headed for the school while her mother pulled quickly away and headed off.

Nina was looking around immediately, braving putting her face into the wind to search for me. I raised my hand and she rushed to me, colliding with me so hard that both of us nearly went down into the snowbank. As always the feel of her body against mine, even through multiple layers of winter clothing, made me feel warm all over.

"I can't believe it!" She yelled, kissing my face and my lips. "How did you do it? What did you say?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked nonchalantly.

"You know what I'm talking about." She smiled. "I couldn't believe it. Daddy sat me down last night and told me that if I insisted on seeing you that he wouldn't stop me." Her smile faded a little. "He said he still didn't particularly care for you or trust you, but that he saw no advantage to trying to keep us apart."

"Well," I said. "It's not exactly a dowry of a kingdom just yet. But it's a start. And your Mom?"

"Mom wasn't too happy about his decision." She admitted. "In fact, I heard them arguing about it. They were actually yelling at each other when he told her. Finally they started whispering back and forth, so I couldn't hear what was being said. She didn't seem too happy this morning but she didn't tell me to stay away from you like she did yesterday."

"So I guess I won't be coming over for any family dinners in the near future?" I asked.

She smiled and kissed me again, a long, luxuriant kiss. "Not just yet." She said. "But give it time."

We started walking into the school. "So what did you say to Daddy anyway?" She asked. "He wouldn't tell me."

"I don't think your Dad would really like it if I told you what we talked about." I answered. "It was kind of personal."

"Did it have to do with the years after the war like you thought?" She asked, her curiosity plain on her face.

"Nina, I really don't think he would want you to know what he said. Sorry."

She frowned. "You must have some sort of gift Bill. How you got Dad to open up to you, how you convinced him to let us be together." She shook her head. "Will you tell me someday? Someday in a few years?"

"I'll consider it." I told her. "In the meantime, I have the night off. I was wondering if you would do me the honor of accompanying me to dinner and a movie tonight?"

She gave me another kiss, again in front of everyone on the quad. "I suppose." She said. "Unless something better comes along of course."

We decided that it would be a good idea to establish with her parents that we would in fact be seeing each other. With that in mind I agreed to pick Nina up for our date at her house; just like a normal teenager would do. It had seemed like a good idea when we discussed it but as I pulled my car up to the curb that night I felt that maybe it hadn't been such a hot plan after all. My body was tensed up with nervous tension and I hesitated before I was able to pull myself out of my Datsun and trudge up to the curb.

There was another long hesitation before I could bring myself to ring the doorbell.

My nervousness turned out to be unfounded. Nina answered the door and quickly stepped out of it onto the porch. The reason for my nervousness however, was not so unfounded. Nina, dressed in a nice pair of slacks, her hair styled attractively (the mark of Tracy and Cindy), looked a little upset.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"Let's go." She replied, heading down the porch for my car.

After a brief moment I followed her.

As we drove downtown towards the restaurant where I'd made reservations she told me what had happened.

"Mom is not very keen on Dad's decision to allow us to date." She told me.

"No?" I asked, not terribly surprised after the story that Mr. Blackmore had told me. It was Mrs. Blackmore, after all, that had born the brunt of the Bob Simpson episode.

"No." She agreed. "They've been arguing and fighting pretty much since you first talked to him. When I told Dad that you and I were going out tonight he kind of grunted at me but didn't say anything. But when I told Mom," She shook her head. "Mom started in right away about how she didn't agree with Dad, about how she thought you were a lowdown slimebag, and how she didn't think I should be going out with you. She told me I would be staying home and that despite what my father had said, that I was not to see you anymore."

"Wow." I commented.

"I appealed to Dad and they had another argument, a pretty nasty one. Dad finally told me I could go out with you tonight. Mom stayed in her room and wouldn't come out."

"I'm sorry." I told her, not really sure what I was apologizing for.

"Bill, I almost didn't go tonight. Mom and Dad have NEVER fought like this. Never! The most they've ever done in front of me is have little squabbles over money or housework or something. This is tearing them apart! Do you know how that makes me feel? I almost cancelled my date with you just to keep them from fighting."

"But you didn't." I said softly.

"I couldn't Bill." She told me. "I need to be with you. I couldn't bear to call you up and tell you I wouldn't come tonight. I couldn't bear not seeing you. Oh Christ, why does all of this have to be so damn complicated? Is this going to happen every time we go out?"

I let my hand drop to her knee where I patted it. "Nina," I told her. "I don't think it's going to happen every time."

"Why not?" She asked.

"There's one thing I learned while I was talking to your Dad." I explained. "That is that your parents love each other deeply. They always have. They have the kind of love that you and I have and believe me, that kind of love is rare among married couples. This won't break them apart Nina. And I believe it's one of those things that starts off as bad as it's going to get and then gradually gets better as time goes by. Your Mom and your Dad are waiting for me to break you heart. They think that's what my purpose is due to various things in their past. Do you remember the day I came to the emergency room?

"Of course." She answered. "I remember everything about that day."

"I told you that you would be taking a gamble by returning to me, that you were gambling with the possibility that I might break your heart again. Remember?"

"Yes."

"Your parents are trying to contemplate that same gamble." I told her. "Only they don't have much to lose in it. You have the possibility of love to lose. They really don't have anything. No matter what happens, they'll still have you. They don't realize that they're gambling with your happiness of course. They just perceive that I'm an asshole and that you'd be better off without me. Now I've managed to change your Dad's views on me a little with the talk we had, but I haven't managed to change your Mom's views. As time goes on however, and when I don't break your heart, and when they see that you are happy, I think they'll come around. Just remember, this is probably as bad as it's going to get."

She nodded and put her hand on top of mine. I gave her knee another squeeze. "You do have a way of making people feel better Bill." She told me.

"I do my best." I told her. "Now let's forget about your parents for a while and go out and have a good time. That's what people in love are supposed to do, right?"

She picked up my hand and put it to her lips, kissing it briefly. "Right." She answered.

A good time we had. We went to dinner at a Black Angus restaurant, both of us having the prime rib. Afterwards we drove to the movie theater, just in time to catch a showing of "War Games". The movie had been out long enough that not too many people were in the theater. We sat in the back row, in the lover's section.

I had seen "War Games" before of course, way back when. I found it not terribly interesting since the computer technology was completely antiquated from my point of view and because it's main pretense was something I knew was never going to happen. After all, the Soviet Union was going to fall in seven more years taking with it the threat of sudden nuclear annihilation. But I enjoyed it all the same because Nina was there with me.

We held hands and cuddled up together through the first part of the movie. By the time the FBI agents were taking our hero into custody our lips had drifted together and the movie was all but forgotten as we slid our tongues into each other's mouths contentedly. Our kisses became more heated, more frantic as the minutes ticked past. My erection throbbed in my pants, eventually bringing a dull ache with it, an ache that I knew would be pleasantly agonizing by the time this evening was over and would only be relieved in my bedroom.

Nina was similarly aroused. She clung harshly to me, pressing herself to me, her hands trailing up and down my body. She had removed her coat when we'd sat down and even with the dim lighting I could see that her nipples were protruding outward, visible through the material of her sweater. The sight of them nearly made me crazy and I longed to place my hand upon them, to slide my fingers under the hem of the sweater, to force my way into her bra. I could imagine what her flesh would feel like against my palm and the very thought almost made me have an accident in my pants.

Nina's lips left my mouth and slowly trailed down to my neck. She began kissing and sucking lightly, nipping at my earlobes. This made me tremble with desire and it took every ounce of my willpower to keep from trying to push her a little farther.

Near the end of the movie she pulled her lips from my neck. She was panting and her voice sounded frustrated. "Bill," She whispered in my ear. "Are my boobs too small?"

"What?" I panted back, shifting myself in my seat, trying to reposition my painful erection.

"Don't you like them?" She asked. "Are they too small for you?"

"No Nina." I told her. "They're beautiful. Really. But why…"

"Then why won't you touch them?" She asked.

"What?" I couldn't have been more surprised if she'd asked why I couldn't concentrate real hard and levitate my body into the air.

"I've been trying to push them into you for the past twenty minutes." She told me. "All my life I've heard about girls getting felt up at the movies. I want to get felt up Bill. So put your damn hands on my tits!"

I looked at her, feeling an extra burst of blood going to my wang. This was Nina talking like this! Nina! Her words almost made me lose control of myself.

"I didn't think…"

"No you didn't." She breathed. "Now touch me. Show me how much you like them."

She leaned forward and kissed me again, her right hand taking my left. She placed it on the swell of her breast and I felt the softness, the firmness that I'd fantasized so much about. Even through the sweater I felt the hardness of the nipple pushing into my hand. I groaned and began to softly squeeze her. She moaned back into my mouth.

It was less than five minutes before my hand slid down to the hem of her sweater and found it's way underneath. Nina offered no protest, in fact she arched her back to give me freer access. I felt the soft, smooth skin of her stomach as my palm worked it's way upward. I felt the ribs beneath the flesh and finally the wire and cotton of her bra. With a practiced push of my fingers, my hand was beneath and her breast was against palm, her nipple pushing into it.

Her breathing became frantic as I caressed her, her tongue plunging deeper and deeper into my mouth. Her own hand slid beneath my sweater, feeling my flesh, caressing it. Finally it slid back down, her fingers hesitating at the waist of my pants. They pushed on and her hand found the bulge at my crotch. She gave it an experimental squeeze; a squeeze which almost made me come right there.

"Oh Bill." She whispered, breaking the kiss for an instant.

"Uhhh." Was all I could say in reply.

She continued to caress me through my pants while I continued to feel her bare breasts beneath her bra. I switched from one to the other, comparing them, touching them, relishing them. All too soon the music from the speakers picked up a notch and we looked up to see the credits rolling across the screen. Around us other people were standing and heading for the exits. Reluctantly we broke apart, extricating our hands from each other.

She gave me one final kiss. "Good movie." She commented breathlessly.

"Yeah." I agreed. "The best I've seen to this point."

It was well before ten o'clock when I dropped her off in front of her house.

Our kiss goodnight was sedate and brief in deference to the fact that one or both of her parents were probably watching through the curtains. We exchanged "I love you's" and she stepped out of the Datsun. She paused at the front door, giving me one last wave. A second later she was safely inside.

I drove home slowly, my balls aching desperately, the pain increasing with each bump my sub-standard shock absorbers didn't absorb. The house was dark when I let myself in. I took myself upstairs and undressed. Ten seconds later I had myself in hand. Twenty seconds after that it was over. I rolled over and fell asleep.

She came over the next day to study for finals, which were coming up fast. We spread the books from our common classes on the coffee table and I put on a BTO album that I'd found in my Dad's record cabinet. I was actually interested in studying. I needed to nail down the Biochemistry test in order to keep my average high enough to qualify for the academic scholarship I had my eye upon. But Nina had other ideas.

She began kissing the side of my neck and rubbing herself against me. I could feel the press of her breasts against my arm and could remember how they'd felt against my hand.

"Nina." I protested playfully, not pulling away from her. "We're supposed to be studying."

She took my face in her hands and turned it towards hers. Her eyes were shining. "This is Bio-chemistry, isn't it?" She asked, putting her lips to mine, licking out with her tongue.

"In a way." I agreed, putting my arms around her.

We kissed and licked on each other's necks and ears. I tasted the salty tang of her flesh, nibbled on the softness of her earlobe, kissed the back of her neck just below the hairline. My hand found it's way beneath her shirt and bra again. I caressed her breasts gently, with more care than I'd been able to show the previous night in the movie theater. Her nipple pushed insistently against my hand. Her breathing quickened at my touch and her arms tightened around my back. She leaned backwards into the couch, pulling me atop her, allowing me to feel her entire body pressed against mine. My erection pressed into her hip and I couldn't help but push it more firmly against her.

She felt this and shifted beneath me, bring one of her legs outward until it was resting on the floor. Suddenly the crotch of my jeans was pushing against the crotch of hers. Her hands dropped down to my butt and pulled firmly, grinding me against her.

I groaned at the contact and our kiss broke. We looked into each other's eyes. Her's showed desire and the realization that things were getting very serious. There was some fear there as well. Finally she put her mouth back to mine and pulled me against her, encouraging me with her hips to push myself to her. I did, finding the sensation pleasantly unfulfilling.

The sound of our garage door opening made us pull apart. Dad was home. Was he early? A quick glance at the clock showed that he was actually a little late. Time had slipped by that quickly. By the time he entered the house we were composed again and studying away. If he had any suspicions to the contrary, he kept them to himself.

Nina and I made plans to do some more studying the next afternoon. Some REAL studying this time. She told me that she would be a little later than usual.

"How come?" I asked.

"Oh, I just have a little something to take care of." She told me mysteriously. "It's nothing big."

"Fair enough." I replied, feeling mild curiosity at what that "little something" might be. But we talked no more on the subject.

She came over to my house about an hour later than usual. Dad was already home by then so we did nothing but study and exchange kisses on the porch as she was leaving.

As January wound onward Nina and I got together as much as we could. Usually it was at my house to study or to listen to music or to talk or to make out on the couch before Dad got home. On Saturday and Sundays, before I went to work, we would typically spend the day together doing something. Skiing was a passion we both shared and when the weather permitted we made the drive to the Idaho ski resorts and spent the day on the slopes. We would hold and kiss each other as we ascended on the ski lifts. We would cuddle together in the warmth of the lodge afterword, sipping coffee and talking of things that lovers talked of before making the long drive home. We were in love and the time passed quickly when we were together, slowly when we were apart. Our intimacies did not progress beyond my sliding my hand up under her shirt or her feeling the outline of my erection through my pants. Most of the time we merely kissed and held each other.

Things reached an uncomfortable impasse at the Blackmore household. According to Nina her mother no longer protested when she went out with me or went over to my house. She never withheld the car from her since she knew that I would simply come pick her up in mine if it was required. But she was obviously not very happy about her continued rendezvous with me either. Her mom and dad also stopped fighting with each other. But at the same time there was a strain in their relationship that hadn't been there before. She told me it was like they were constantly waiting for a hammer to fall, a hammer that simply kept hanging there above them. Nina felt considerable guilt for the way her parents were feeling, as did I when I heard her stories, but not enough to stop our visits. I only hoped that someday they would accept me as part of their family because I intended to be a part of it whether they liked it or not.

One afternoon after school we were watching television on the couch. Dad was not yet home from work and Nina was lying in my lap with her feet outstretched. I stroked her hair for a while and then her face. She cooed as I did this and I noticed that she had a few pimples near her nose and on her chin. They were not large or unsightly and she had done a decent job of covering them with make-up. I noticed them primarily because I'd never seen acne on her face before. She had one of those smooth complexions that just wasn't prone to it.

"Pimples." She said with disgust when she noticed me looking at them. "Are they bad?"

"Not at all." I assured her. "Every teenager gets them from time to time."

"I know." She answered, "But I've never had them before. Not until last week anyway."

"Maybe the stress of being in love has given them to you." I suggested jokingly.

She chuckled. "In a way you're completely right." She answered.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I'll explain later." She said.

"What do you mean?"

She reached up and grabbed me by the hair, pulling my face to hers. "Later." She whispered, licking at my lips. "Your Dad will be home soon."

We made out in that position for a while and then finally twisted around so that she was lying atop me. As we kissed she rubbed her crotch gently back and forth across mine, arousing me greatly. My hands slid under her shirt once more, caressing her bare back, finally working around to her front. However this time, when they slid under her bra she winced as if in pain.

"What's the matter?" I asked, instantly withdrawing my hand, bothered by the thought I might have hurt her.

"It's nothing." She told me dismissively. "They're just a little sore."

"Sore?" I asked, remembering uncomfortably what that had meant when my wife had begun to complain of that. That certainly wasn't possible with Nina. If it was, I'd sadly misread her.

"It'll go away." She said. "Don't worry about it."

But the mood was broken for that day. When Dad came home he found us sitting together on the couch watching the Phil Donahue show while we held hands.

I was officially given an offer of employment from the trauma center on January 15. I accepted it later that day. When I went to work at the pizza joint that night I officially gave notice to the manager that I would be leaving his fine employ. He gave one more try at convincing me to stay, offering to make me an assistant manager and bumping my salary to a whole four and a quarter an hour.

"I know the hospital is offering you more than that." He told me. "But I'm offering you a management position. That looks awfully good on the old resume."

I respectfully declined his offer and he took it well. He told me that if I ever found myself in need of a job, that I should see him first. I told him I would.

January 24 was my last day there. I clocked out at 10:00 and turned in my uniform to him. We shook hands and he told me he would miss me. Though I didn't particularly like him, he had given me a job and had helped me earn money for college. I felt I owed him a little bit.

"You know what you need to do?" I told him just before I walked out the door.

"What's that Bill?" He asked.

"Get into pizza delivery." I suggested.

He looked at me strangely. "Pizza delivery? Nobody does that. It isn't financially feasible."

"If you do it right, it will be." I said, "You see, Americans are lazy. If they can get someone to drive their pizza to them, then they'll do it. There are two tricks to this that you need to employ. One, you need to make sure their pizza is still hot when it arrives. You'll need to come up with some sort of insulated carrier for that. Shouldn't be too hard," I assured him. "The technology is out there. The second thing you need to do, and this is hard for a business person to accept, is NOT charge people for the delivery."

He laughed. "That's very interesting Bill." He said. "But you don't know a whole lot about business. How could I NOT charge someone a delivery fee for driving their pizza to them? How would I pay for the driver? How would I pay for the gas?"

"Ahh." I said. "That's the thing. With all due respect, I know a considerable amount about business. It's what I'll be majoring in in college and I've studied quite extensively on my own. If you were smart, you'd listen to my advice. I'm not wrong about this."

He seemed more amused than awed by my speech. "Okay Bill." He told me patronizingly. "Tell me how I can magically deliver pizzas at no cost to the customer and still make a profit on them."

"It's simple." I said. "You hire an eighteen year old kid with a car and pay him four dollars an hour or so. You stipulate that he pays for the gas, insurance, and uses his own vehicle. His main job will be the deliveries but when there are none going on, you can also have him help out around here making pizzas for the regular customers, sweeping up, doing dishes, whatever. You will have to shell out a little cash for advertising to make it known to the general public in your area that you deliver. Your target group is those people that are too lazy or too busy to make food and who don't really want to go out to pick something up. They will be the people that would otherwise have made some hamburger helper or something instead of going out. If they know that they can call your number and have a hot pizza at their front door in less than an hour, they'll do it. Pizza will triumph over hamburger helper every time. When you do your ads you need to put in something like "guaranteed hot and fresh in forty minutes or less" or some crap like that. You also need to put in "no delivery fee". Your pizza sales will go up enough to cover the four bucks an hour that the extra employee makes and will give you considerable profit. Remember, you're snaring people who would not otherwise have come in here and bought a pizza.

That's the key to the whole thing. Your driver will get tips from those he delivers to since the public will feel obligated to give him a buck or so since there's no delivery fee. Your driver is happy because he's making reasonably good money and gets to get out. The public is happy because they don't have to go out and pick up their pizza. And you're happy because your sales are going up. You would do especially well on Friday nights, and on Sunday afternoons during football season. Trust me on this, it'll work and it'll work well."

He smiled condescendingly at me. "Well thanks for the advice Bill." He said. "I'll certainly take it under consideration."

"You do that." I smiled back, knowing that he would do no such thing. Oh well, his loss. In two or three years when the pizza delivery craze hit the nation he would undoubtedly think back on this conversation and wonder why he hadn't listened to me. You can't change the world.

When I stepped out of the pizza parlor I saw that a blizzard had blown in at some point. Cursing I got in my car and drove very carefully home. As I pulled into my driveway I stopped, staring down the street.

A smile formed on my face. In Anita's driveway a late model Buick was parked. A late model Buick I'd once crouched next to as I pulled a coil wire from Anita's vehicle. It was nearly 10:30 at night. Jack Valentine wasn't merely popping by for a visit. He was staying the night. Fate had reclaimed what was hers. And for once I was ecstatic about it.

My new work schedule was both better and worse than my old. I went to the hospital at 12:00 each afternoon, Monday through Friday. I worked straight through until six o'clock in the evening with only two ten-minute breaks. In a way it was an exploitation of labor laws. Thirty hours a week was just under what they had to consider full time and thus pay benefits for. And six hours a day was just under what they had to give a lunch break for. I didn't mind being exploited however, especially after I saw my first paycheck. At six bucks an hour times thirty hours a week minus the miniscule amount of taxes they took out I made damn near a hundred and fifty bucks; a small fortune for a teenager. When I subtracted living expenses from this I put three quarters of it into the computer stocks I was now investing in. I would do this on every subsequent paycheck. My day was coming closer and closer.

Dad too began investing. Like Tracy, once he knew the source of my information he had no problem acting upon it. He diverted all of the money that he had going into savings into the computer stocks. He also freed up some more money from Mom's paycheck and added that to it. When I explained the ramifications of the big play that was soon to come he became very enthusiastic, diverting every spare penny into the investments. Mom questioned this a little but Dad convinced her that I knew what I was doing without actually telling her how he knew this. Since she had seen me obsessively studying all aspects of business for the last two years she had no problem accepting the fact that my foresight was based only on my own common sense.

My new schedule did cut down on my time with Nina on the weekdays. Occasionally she would come over to my house after work and we'd spend a little time together either downstairs or in my room. These were nice times; all times were nice when I was with her, but there wasn't much of an atmosphere for intimacy. Even if my door was closed it felt decidedly weird making out while my parents were home. The most we ever managed was a few deep kisses and a slight dance of tongues.

The weekends however, were now completely free since I no longer had to work on Saturday and Sunday nights. Our ski trips became longer. We would head out early in the morning and drive to resorts further and further away from what we were used to. We trekked all the way up to the very northern fringes of the Idaho panhandle or to the western portions of Montana. We loved everything about these trips; the loading of the equipment in the frigid early morning air, the long drive as we shared coffee from my thermos, the standing in lines waiting for the lifts, the time in the lodge, but especially the long, tired drives home. We would switch off the driving chores but often as not, Nina would end up curled up on my shoulder as we approached Spokane, fast asleep, a contented smile on her face.

The ski trips are special memories of special times but we could not do them every weekend. Sometimes the weather would intrude upon our plans but usually finances did. Skiing is an expensive hobby and most of my money was tied up in my stocks, either growing with latex for college or growing with computer technology for my big move. But having fun does not necessarily have to cost money. Some weekends we would just go ice skating on the frozen lake, or we would take in a movie, or we would just hang around my house. We were in love and we didn't care what we did, as long as we did it together.

As the weeks went by Nina's complexion cleared up again, leaving her soft face unmarred. The pimples she'd had went nearly out of my mind. Her boobs continued to be sore for about a week and that too went away. Unfortunately I wasn't given much opportunity to touch them.

In late February we took a ski trip to western Montana and enjoyed ourselves so much that the sun was setting before we packed up and headed home. Nina volunteered to drive the first leg back and before she even got the car back onto I-90 I was fast asleep beside her, my hand resting on her knee.

The sensation of the car coming to a stop woke me some time later. I opened my eyes and saw that complete darkness had fallen outside. The stars were out and shining with a brilliance that can only be experienced at high altitude. Nina had pulled into a turnout beside the road, crunching over the gravel and finally coming to a stop behind a snowbank. From the other side the sound of traffic could be heard passing on the interstate.

"Where are we?" I asked, yawning, looking around outside. My ears popped as I yawned.

She turned off the headlights and pitch-blackness resulted, making the stars shine even brighter.

"We're in Idaho." She told me. "Up near the summit outside of Coeur d'Alene."

"Nina." I admonished. "You shouldn't have driven so far. Why didn't you wake me up sooner."

"I was okay." She told me, leaning back in her seat. "You looked like you were enjoying your little nap." She giggled. "You're cute when you're asleep. My eyes were starting to get a little tired though so I thought I'd rest. It's pretty here, isn't it? You can see all the stars."

"Yes." I agreed, looking around. It was a very pleasant spot. Even the sound of passing traffic added just the right amount of white noise. "Why don't you let me drive for a while. We're awfully late."

"I called Daddy from the ski resort before we left." She said. "He knows I'm going to be late. Why don't we just sit for a while? Enjoy the night."

I smiled, putting my arm around her and drawing her close. "If I didn't know better." I told her. "I'd think you were trying to put a move on me."

She snuggled up to me. "And what would you do if I was?" She challenged.

I shrugged. "Call the cops?"

"I don't think they'll hear you from here." She said.

"Well," I answered. "I guess the next best thing would be to give in."

We kissed, lightly at first, reacquainting ourselves with the taste of each other. Her arms went around my neck and mine went around her waist, inside of her coat. Before long our passion heated up and we were exchanging deep soul kisses, our tongues dueling back and forth. The gearshift and the parking brake lever were getting in the way so I finally pulled her over the top of them so she was sitting on my lap, facing me.

"I don't know about this." She said, bending her neck uncomfortable against the roof of the car.

"Here." I said, reaching down with my right hand and grabbing the seat lever. "Is this better?"

With a pull the seat reclined backwards until it was resting against the back seat. This put me almost horizontal and put Nina's body comfortably against me.

"Worlds better." She whispered, bringing her lips to mine.

We kissed contentedly for an unknown amount of time, our libidos shifting into high gear while the idling car engine kept us warm. The spring from the seat bit into my back and my left leg fell asleep because of her weight pushing down on my thigh but I was in heaven all the same. When she began rubbing her hips back and forth, putting pressure on my straining erection I groaned, letting my mouth find her neck.

"They're not sore anymore." She whispered to me.

"What?" I asked, kissing her earlobe and pulling her waist harder into me.

"My boobs." She whispered back, nipping at my ear. "They're not sore anymore."

Not needing to be hit over the head with a hammer, I slid my hands under her shirt. Her coat got in the way of this process so she impatiently sat up and ripped it off her body, tossing on the driver's seat. When she leaned back down the going was easier and my hands found her bare flesh.

"I like your hands on me." She said softly, kissing my eyelid.

"And my hands like to be on you." I assured her.

As I felt her under her clothing she sat up a little. I don't know who initiated the action but suddenly my arms pushed upward, hiking her sweater and her bra up to her shoulders. Her bare stomach and breasts were now exposed to me although it was too dark to see them in any detail. But my hands found them and began to touch them softly, feeling them unencumbered for the first time. As I've mentioned before, they were small, each hand covered a breast completely, but they were firm and very erotic to touch, the skin warm and moist from aroused perspiration. She moaned as I slid my palms back and forth across them, as my fingers gently touched and flicked her erect nipples. Her chest heaved as she panted with sexual excitement and the knowledge that she was showing a secret part of her body to me for the first time.

I let my hands slide from her breast to her armpits. I tugged gently upward and she slid forward. With a pull of my arms she leaned forward into me and her left breast was suddenly against my face, the nipple pushing into my cheek. I slid my tongue out and licked around the perimeter, finally touching the nipple, feeling the rough ridges of it. Nina jerked as if shocked at the contact.

"Oh Bill." She moaned.

I teased the nipple for the briefest instant and then gently sucked it into my mouth, suckling it as a baby would. It tasted divine against my tongue. I had sucked many a nipple in my two lives but never had one sent tingles through my body as this one did.

Nina's hands went to the back of my head and pulled me tighter against her chest. She moaned and cooed as I suckled, her fingers running spastically through my hair. I switched to the other nipple, bathing it with my saliva, my hand cupping the first. Nina's hips began moving in an involuntary rhythm on my abdomen as sensations that she was unfamiliar with assaulted her body.

I switched breasts again, allowing my hands to drop down to her stomach and flanks where my fingers slid slowly up and down upon the soft, sensitive flesh there. I could feel the gooseflesh that was covering her body beneath my fingers, hard, miniscule bumps of overheated skin.

And then suddenly she was pulling back from me, her fingers pushing off my shoulders, her nipple popping free of my mouth and leaving a trail of my saliva from it.

I looked up in confusion, my own arousal near a fever pitch. What was wrong?

"I'm sorry Bill." She said, near tears, her body trembling all over.

"What's the matter?" I asked breathlessly, still tasting the aftereffects of her flesh in my mouth.

"I…," She hesitated. With jerky motions she reached up and pulled her shirt and bra back down.

"Nina?" I asked gently.

"I got scared." She said miserably. "I've never done anything like this before. I'm sorry Bill."

"Nina, it's okay." I soothed, cursing myself for pushing things too fast. I should have known better!

"You must hate me." She said.

"No." I protested. "It's me that should be sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I didn't mean to push you that fast." I pulled her to me again, hugging her, patting her back.

"You weren't pushing me." She said into my ear. "I wanted to do that. I liked it. I've never felt anything like that before. But it just got kind of… overwhelming. I started to feel like I wasn't in control and it scared me. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." I repeated soothingly. "We'll move at your pace. Whenever we're, uh, doing things you stop whenever you want to. I'll never try to push you. I promise."

She looked up at me. I could see just a hint of moisture in her eyes from the reflected starlight. "Isn't that frustrating for you?" She asked.

"Don't worry about that." I told her. "I love you and I'll move at whatever pace you want."

She kissed my cheek gently. "I love you Bill."

We hugged for a moment and then she sat up. "You suppose we should start heading for home again?" She asked.

"No." I told her. "Let's just sit here like this for awhile."

She planted a kiss on my nose, just a brief peck. "Okay." She whispered, putting her head back on my shoulder.

Another thing that suffered from my new schedule and my relationship with Nina were my study sessions with Mike. This bothered me at first until I realized that Mike didn't really need them anymore. His grades remained near the top of the scale and he had completely caught up with all of the concepts that he'd left behind. When our time was cut down I'd worried that he would slip back into academic purgatory but he held his own just fine, passing his finals with an upper B. Though I was never thanked for this accomplishment I felt immense pride in it. I'd pulled him out of the ranks of the dropouts and into the ranks of future college attendees if that was what he wished. By March of 1984 it would have taken a catastrophic event indeed to push him back into independent study. With only three more months of school left anyway, the allure of that particular thing would no longer be as attractive anyway.

It was the third week of March when Mike showed up at my door at 7:00 in the evening, just after I'd gotten home from work. His visit was unusual and I greeted him warmly. There was always a conflict in my personality when I hung out with Mike. On the one hand I had a genuine need to help him make something of himself, to keep him off of the path that fate had in store for him. But on the other hand he was still an immature seventeen-year-old and his conversation about phony sexual exploits and macho posturing quickly got old.

"Hey dude." He whispered to me at the front door, casting a wary eye upon my Dad, who was sitting in his favorite chair watching television. "Why don't we walk over to the school for a while?"

I knew what he meant by that. Around the corner from my house was an elementary school, the elementary school we'd both attended once. During it's off-hours it had served as a favored locale for smoking pot, drinking beer, or just plain fucking off. By inviting me there I knew that Mike probably had some marijuana in his possession.

"Sounds good." I nodded, figuring, what the hell? I told my Dad I was going to Mike's house, the standard excuse for such an endeavor, and he grunted in reply. Since our talk, Dad never questioned anything that I did. I'm quite sure he knew exactly what I was going to do.

I retrieved my jacket and we walked that way slowly.

"You got some buds?" I asked as we ambled down the sidewalk of the darkening street.

"Yeah." He nodded. "Got a joint of some pretty good green." He said. "Haven't smoked any in a while but I just felt the need today."

I looked at him. "You haven't smoked any in a while?" I asked, wondering if he was putting me on.

He shook his head. "Nope. I've been running a lot lately and it fucks up my lungs if I smoke cigarettes or pot too much. Makes it hard to breathe. I've quit the cigs completely."

"No shit." I said, suppressing a smile of joy. Mike WAS growing up at last.

"I been running three miles a day on the weekdays." He told me. "On the weekends I've been running the stairs over at the library with a back-pack full of bricks. I'm trying to get in shape for the physical agility test for the fire department. You know what they call the agility test?"

"What's that?" I asked, although I knew.

"The combat challenge." He said dramatically. "My captain told me that if I want to pass it I need to really work on my legs and my endurance. He said running should do it."

Yes, I knew exactly what he was talking about. The combat challenge is the standard physical agility exam for most fire departments. It is a test designed to measure a prospective employee's physical ability to do the job of firefighter (and the cynical ones among us might think it is also designed to keep out women). And it is grueling indeed. I had once taken it as a young paramedic with hopes of joining the fire department and acquiring the increased security and pay that went along with it. You start off by putting on a helmet, turnout jacket, and an air tank. You then walk to an engine and pull out a hundred feet of inch and a half hose. It sounds easy but the hose is charged with water and is very heavy, especially as you pull more and more of it out. It is a real workout on the legs. You then walk over to a sled assembly and pick up a sledgehammer which you must use to force a steel beam backward three feet using chopping motions. You then go over to the wooden, three-story structure that is referred to as "the tower". Still wearing the air tank, which weighs about twenty pounds, you climb up the outside of the building to the third story of the tower on a ladder and then back down again. That complete, you pick up a forty pound roll of supply hose and go inside the tower, climbing up the stairs to the third story. Once there you drop the supply hose and hoist up another forty pound roll that is tied to a rope from the ground. You are not allowed to rest your elbows on the windowsill while you do this. You then lower the rope back down again, pick up the roll you carried up the stairs and carry it back down. The grand finale is to drag a one hundred and seventy-pound dummy twenty yards. You are given four minutes in which to do all of this.

I'd fancied myself in pretty good shape when I'd tried it. I was twenty-six, not smoking at that time, and was in the habit of running. The test defeated me easily. My endurance was strained to the limit by the time I got to the top of the tower. Somehow I'd managed to hoist up the rope and put it back down but the exertion of picking up the hose roll again was too much. By that time I had less than a minute left and I knew I wasn't going to make it. My lungs were burning, my heart was hammering in my chest, and my leg muscles were screaming from the abuse. My time expired as I sat there. For a week afterword I was sore. I never applied at the fire department again for fear of feeling the way I had at that moment.

"I've uh, looked into it before." I told Mike. "Your captain is right. Work on the legs and try to get yourself able to go hard for four straight minutes. Try windsprints."

"Yeah." He said dismissively, mildly offended that I was giving him advice. "No sweat. I'll pass it."

"So they're gonna be hiring for sure?" I asked him next.

"Filing starts May 20." He said. "Written test is June 12, combat challenge June 20. Good thing I'll have graduated before then or I wouldn't have been eligible. From there the oral interviews are scheduled. I'm as good as in the captain tells me. By this time next year I'll be out of the academy and assigned to my first station. A year after that I'll be off probation. A year after that I'm eligible to test for engineer. Two years after that I'm eligible to test for captain."

"Good for you." I said, wondering if he really was a shoe-in like he claimed. It was possible. If he'd made a good impression as an ROP student, and he would have had to make a damn good one after the marijuana incident, the word would filter upward to the powers-that-be in the department. The powers-that-be would see to it that his name was among the next hiring group. The pitfall of this was that the same thing worked in reverse too.

My Mom and Dad, as I've mentioned before, loved to go to parties with their co-workers. It didn't matter the occasion, if there was a party, they were there. One such party was for the opening day of baseball each year. They were in the habit of traveling to one of Mom's fellow worker's house, a woman whose husband possessed a large screen television, for opening day each year. In truth my Dad cared even less about baseball than Mom did. It was simply an excuse to get together with friends, drink lots of beer, eat fancy appetizers and drink more beer.

They left the house at 9:30 that morning and I would have been surprised to see them home anytime before 6:00 that night, riding in a cab of course. Nina and I decided to take advantage of the situation. She came over at 10:00 that morning and by 11:00 we were making out on the couch, our passion accompanied by the sound of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, one of my Dad's albums.

Since that day I'd put my mouth to her breasts we'd been very reserved in our affections. We kissed a lot but didn't tend to go much further than that, even if we were alone. Only once had my hands gone beneath her shirt since then and that had been only because she'd physically picked them up and put them there. I was determined not to push her too far too fast. As a result I was actually getting used to the sensation of blue balls.

But on this day Nina was extremely passionate. Her hands were feeling me all over. She slid them over my chest, under my shirt to my back, to my butt where she squeezed brazenly as our tongues dueled. She ordered me to feel her tits and I gladly put my hand beneath her shirt while my tongue continued it's exploration of her mouth.

As I felt and kissed her she suddenly pulled her mouth from mine. She looked at me, blushing furiously.

"What's wrong?" I asked her, worrying I'd gone too far again.

She licked her lips nervously and then said, "Wouldn't you like to take my shirt off?"

I stared at her, searching her eyes, trying to determine if she was doing this because SHE wanted to or because she thought I wanted to. I saw nothing but passion there, mixed with a little nervous anticipation.

"Yes." I said, stroking her face, feeling the heat coming from the aroused blush. "But are you sure you want me to?"

"Take it off." She told me. "Do to me what you did that night."

Surprised to find my own hands trembling I reached for the hem of her sweater. I lifted upwards and she raised her arms to allow me to pull it off. Her white bra was only a few shades lighter than the pale skin of her stomach, skin which had spent the winter firmly clad in clothing. The sight made my mouth water. I stroked the exposed flesh above her bra cups softly, raising goose bumps on her, and then let my fingers slide around to the back. We kissed as my digits began the process of unclasping her bra snaps.

In a moment I would see my beloved's bare breasts, a sight I'd fantasized about so many times.

The phone started to ring, shrill, annoying decibels, cutting through the air.

We broke our kiss and looked at each other, my fingers freezing in place.

"You gonna answer that?" She asked, pushing her chest into mine.

"Hell no." I said, shaking my head, leaning in to kiss her again.

We tried to re-establish the rhythm and the passion we'd just had but the telephone just kept ringing and ringing and ringing. I didn't attempt to take off her bra while the infernal noise was going on because I didn't want my first view of her breasts in the light of day to be marred by the distraction of a ringing telephone. I wanted to drink in the sight, to relish it, to assign the entire being of my concentration to it. How long could a telephone ring? I wondered. Don't most people give up after ten rings or so? If nobody answers after ten rings they can assume that nobody's home, right?

But not this person. That phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing. We would pause at the end of each ring, relishing the brief silence, expecting that another one would not follow and that we could then get back to business. But after two seconds or so another ring would always shatter the calm of the living room. Finally our mouths broke apart.

"I'm ripping that fucking cord out of the wall." I told Nina, pushing away from her.

"Bill," She said, obviously as annoyed as I, "Why don't you just answer it? Whoever it is must have something important to say or they wouldn't have let it ring so long. Maybe there's some sort of emergency."

"They're gonna have an emergency if they don't have a damn good reason for this shit." I proclaimed.

I walked over to the phone and picked it up roughly, cutting it off in mid-ring. I put it to my ear. "What?!" I almost yelled.

There was a brief pause. Finally, "This is the AT and T operator. Will you accept a collect call from Tracy?"

Tracy? Goddam her! This had better be good. "Yes." I said shortly. "Put her on."

"Thank you." The operator said, probably sounding much huffier than her supervisor would have cared for.

"Bill?" Came my sister's voice hesitantly.

"Hi Tracy." I said impatiently, looking over at Nina, who was sitting on the couch in her bra, her nipples poking at the material. I could vaguely make out the shadow of her aureole through the cotton. My dick was throbbing with desire. This had better be good.

"Uh…" She said uncertainly. "Are Mom and Dad home?"

"No they're not." I said. "It's the first day of baseball." I knew that Tracy would need no further explanation than that.

"Oh yeah." She said, giggling, her tone telling me she knew damn well what day it was and that Mom and Dad wouldn't be home. "It is, isn't it?"

"Yeah." I told her. "So they're over at Janice and Ken's. You might try them tomorrow. Probably later would be better. They're bound to be hung over."

"Okay." She said. "Oh, did you hear about Cindy?"

This got my attention a little. "No." I said. "What about her?"

"I got a letter from her yesterday. Her professor boyfriend is divorcing his wife. Cindy has moved in with him. Can you believe it?"

"Actually I can." I answered. This news didn't surprise me in the least. The only surprise was that it had taken so long.

"She's dropping out of college too." Tracy added. "I guess she figures she got what she went there for."

"I guess she did." I replied, casting another glance at Nina, disheartened to see that her nipples were losing their erection. "Listen Tracy." I said.

"I was kind of in the middle of something."

"I'm sorry." She said. "I'll let you go and get back to it."

"Thanks." I said.

"Umm?" She said hesitantly. "There IS one thing I wanted to ask you while I had you on the line."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Well," She said uncertainly. "The people that I hang out with here are having, well, a little baseball pool."

"A baseball pool?" I asked, exasperated. What the hell did she want to talk to me about this for?

"Yes." She answered. "For five bucks you can enter who you think will be in the World Series this year. If you're right, you win the pot in October."

"The World Series?" I asked, trying to glare through the phone.

"Yes." She said. "So I was wondering if maybe YOU could tell me who was going to be in the series this year? I know you have a real good head for this sort of thing Bill." She giggled knowingly.

I looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then cast a glance at Nina, who was looking at me expectantly, questioningly.

"Tracy," I told her honestly. "I don't have the slightest idea."

There was a long pause. Finally, pouting, "Bill, this doesn't hurt anything. How is this different than you taking advantage of stocks you know are going to go up? I could win twenty-five hundred bucks from this!"

"It doesn't Tracy." I said, lowering my voice a little so Nina couldn't hear. "If I knew, I'd tell you. But I don't know."

"How could you not know?" She nearly screamed, pissed at my refusal to supply her with this information. "You've already lived through it! You know! You just don't want to tell me for some moralistic, bullshit reason."

The biting edge of her words cut through me like a knife, deflating my desire like a punctured balloon. "Tracy," I said carefully. "I really don't know. I'm not a baseball fan. I've never paid attention to baseball in my life, just like Dad. How the hell would I know who was in the series in 1984?"

"Because you've already been through it!" She cried. "You HAVE to know. You just don't want to tell me!"

"Tracy?" I asked, looking at Nina again, she was now definitely sensing that something was wrong. "Tell me who won the World Series in 1982."

"What?" She asked.

"You've already lived through it." I said, mocking her tone. "It's only been two years from your perspective instead of," I thought for a second, doing some quick mental addition, "Seventeen years from my perspective. So tell me, who won the series?"

"That's different!" She said desperately. "You're a boy. Boys know this shit!"

"This boy doesn't." I told her, feeling my own anger starting to rise now. "But let's put that aside. Let's ask you some girl shit. Who won best supporting actress in 1982?"

"What?" She asked, confused.

"You heard me." I whispered harshly. "That's girl shit if I've ever heard it. So who won it?"

There was silence on the line for a moment. "I don't know." She finally said.

"And I don't know who won the fucking World Series in 1984." I told her. "And if you call me back in October and give me the names of the two teams who are actually in the fucking thing, I still wouldn't know who won it. I don't watch baseball Tracy. I don't give a rat's ass about who was in it or who won it. You should know that. You're right, this information is harmless, and I would tell you if I knew, but I don't know. And I don't appreciate you screaming at me because of this. And I especially don't appreciate your indignant tone with me because of it."

The silence on the line was longer this time. "I'm sorry Bill." She finally said. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."

"Goddam right you shouldn't have." I said.

"I just thought that maybe…, well, you know."

"Tracy," I told her, calming a little. "You're going to be all right. You don't need to be so greedy. Isn't it enough that you're alive?"

She didn't have an answer for that.

The rest of our conversation took less than thirty seconds. When I hung up, Nina was looking at me quizzically.

"Your sister?" She asked carefully.

I nodded.

"You seemed mad at her." Nina said. "Anything wrong?"

"Nothing I can't handle." I told her.

"Bill," She said softly. "What's wrong? You can talk to me about anything you know?"

"I know Nina." I answered. "And usually I do. But this is something of a family secret if you know what I mean."

"Like what my Dad told you?" She asked sharply.

"Kind of." I agreed. "But much more secret than that. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." She said, pouting a little.

The mood for the day was effectively broken. By the time my parents got home that evening Nina was long since at her house and I was long since releived of my testosterone by my own means. I spent the rest of the day with Mike, drinking some beer he'd managed to get hold of. It was fun but not as fun as what Tracy had interrupted.

It was late April when I went to Nina's house to pick her up one evening. It was Friday night and we had a date to go see the release of the movie 1984 based on the Orwell novel that had been the basis of the first conversation we had shared. I pulled to the curb at her house at 6:30 and stepped out of my car, heading for the front door.

I was no longer nervous about picking up Nina at home. The impasse with her parents was holding strong. Nina had told me that her parents had gone back to their usual relationship, as I'd predicted, but that I was never discussed in their household. It was taboo apparently. When she told them that she was going out with me they would give a small grunt in reply and question no further. That they weren't happy about her continued relationship with me was obvious but they never tried to stop her or talk her out of seeing me. She said they treated it as a phase she was going through, a phase that would eventually end. The fact that they still, after all this time, didn't trust me, that they still, after seeing the obvious happiness of their daughter, didn't trust my intentions, spoke volumes about how badly they'd been stung by the Bob Simpson episode. They really thought that I still intended to dump their daughter like a bag of garbage. All I could do was hope that someday they would come around. Didn't they realize what they were doing to Nina?

Because of this impasse, an unwritten set of rules had developed about my picking up Nina for dates. I did not enter their house or speak with them in any way. Nina would simply answer the door when I was expected and then leave upon my arrival. They, in turn, would be out of the room when I arrived, keeping us from even having to look at each other. I expected nothing different on this day. But something different was what I got.

I rang the doorbell and stood patiently, waiting for the door to swing open.

It didn't. I rang the doorbell again, pushing longer this time and finally was rewarded with the sound of footsteps approaching the door. It swung open and there stood Nina. She was wearing a robe tied tightly around her. Her hair was a frazzled mess, as if she'd gotten out of the shower and dried it but had not combed it. She most definitely didn't appear ready to go to the movies any time soon.

"What's wrong?" I asked, puzzled.

"I'm sorry Bill." She said, her voice worried. "I don't think I'm going to make it tonight. Daddy's sick."

"Sick?" I said, "What's wrong with him?"

She shook her head. "He says it's just the stomach flu but I don't think so. He was sitting in his chair after dinner and he started getting all fidgety. Then he started throwing up. He's all pale right now and sweaty and he looks like he's not breathing right."

"Sweaty?" I asked, feeling an instant return of my paramedic instinct. When people were sweaty for no good reason, something was usually very wrong. That in conjunction with "not breathing right" made me immediately concerned.

"Yes." Nina nodded. "I've seen people in the ER that look like he does now." She told me. "And usually they're very sick. I'm worried about him Bill. I've been trying to get him to let me take him to the hospital but he's being stubborn. He's scared, I can tell, but he won't go. I want to stay here in case something happens."

"Let me see him." I said suddenly.

"Bill," She shook her head. "I don't think…"

I wasn't going to take no for an answer. I pushed past her and entered the Blackmore house for the first time in many months.

"Bill!" Nina protested.

"Where is he?" I asked her.

She looked at me for a moment, her eyes scared, her own face pale. She pointed to the kitchen. "In the den." She said. "Through there."

"Come on." I told her, heading that way.

Mr. Blackmore's den was a room that had been built to house a bedroom. He had long since converted it to his own personal use. An oak, roll-top desk was the dominant piece of furniture. It sat against the far wall. It's surface was scattered with books containing lovingly placed stamps beneath plastic covers. On the wall above the desk a deer rifle sat in a rack. On either side of this were large racks taken from an elk and a deer. On a small love seat next to the desk was Mr. Blackmore.

"Jesus." I muttered, looking at him.

He looked worse than Nina had led me to believe. His skin was not merely pale but was gray and ashen. Sweat was glistening off of him, his shirt was damp with it. His mouth was open and he was breathing rapidly, seeming to struggle to get air in. His right arm was massaging his left shoulder.

"What are YOU doing here?" Mrs. Blackmore, who was sitting next to him, asked sharply.

I ignored her. "Mr. Blackmore." I told him, walking over. "You need to go to the hospital. Now."

He looked up at me. "Bill," He said, shaking his head. "I think you'd better leave. Sorry to have to postpone your little date." This last was said quite sarcastically.

I reached down and grabbed his wrist, feeling for a pulse.

"You will LEAVE this house immediately!" Mrs. Blackmore told me, ripping his hand away from mine.

"I know what I'm doing." I said forcefully, meeting her gaze. We stared for a second and she finally dropped her eyes.

I took his wrist back, finding his radial pulse. It was beating rapidly and irregularly, sometimes not pulsating for as long as six seconds. I noticed that when I could not feel the pulsations, Mr. Blackmore's breathing became more ragged at the same time. Though I did not have a cardiac monitor on me, I had a pretty good idea of why this was happening.

"Nina," I said. "Go call 911 and get an ambulance here."

"What?" Mr. Blackmore said. "I don't think…"

"Do it now." I told Nina calmly and with unmistakable command in my voice.

She gave a quick glance towards her father. "No Nina." He told her. "I'll be all right."

"Do it Nina." I said firmly. "Tell them he's having a heart attack."

Nina was convinced. She rushed to the phone. Mr. and Mrs. Blackmore were not. They called once after her but quickly realized it was futile. When she was gone they turned to me.

"How dare you come into this house and…" Mrs. Blackmore started.

"What do you think you're…" Mr. Blackmore started.

"Quiet, both of you!" I barked. It had the desired effect.

"Mr. Blackmore." I said, looking at him. "Are you having chest pain right now?"

"No." He told me. "Just some indigestion. She made some spicy food tonight and it didn't agree with me."

"Uh huh." I nodded. "Why are you rubbing your shoulder like that?"

"It's sore." He said. "What business is this…"

"Show me where your chest hurts." I told him. "Point with your finger."

Rolling his eyes upward he put a finger right in the middle of his chest. "Right here." He told me. "It's just indigestion."

"Indigestion doesn't hurt right there." I told him. "It hurts down here." I put my finger just under his rib cage. "And it doesn't radiate up to your left shoulder either. And it doesn't make you short of breath or sweaty. It doesn't make you throw up. And it most definitely doesn't make your pulse irregular. Have you ever had heart problems before?"

"No!" He said.

"You're having them now." I said. "You're having a heart attack Mr. Blackmore and a very dangerous one if I'm right about what I'm feeling in your pulse. You need to get to the hospital, now."

"What the hell do you know about it?" He asked angrily. "You're just a kid."

I smiled, gazing at him meaningfully. "We've had this conversation before." I said. "Do we need to rehash it? I think you're having a heart attack. Go to the hospital with the ambulance when it gets here. If I'm wrong, then you'll get to say I told you so."

Before he could answer Mary Blackmore spoke up. "Jack." She said softly. "Why don't you do what he says?"

I looked over at her in surprise. She was the last person in the world I expected to have as an ally in this thing. I saw raw, naked fear in her eyes. I think she knew that I was right and she was terrified that she was about to lose her husband. So terrified that she was even willing to listen to me.

"Listen to your wife Sir." I told him. "You want to see your grandkids someday don't you?"

"Okay." He nodded. "Once again young man, you've stated your case well."

"You can't die Mr. Blackmore," I told him. "Until you learn to get used to me dating your daughter. I won't allow it."

He actually chuckled at that.

From outside came the sound of approaching sirens.