“Don’t worry about convincing me,” she said, starting on toward Dimitri’s. “You had me with the talk you gave at UVA. The fact that I’d be working with my best friend from grade school was just icing on the cake.”
“I was your best friend?” Kaem said, getting the door and opening it.
She shrugged, “Okay. My only friend.”
“But we never even talked,” Kaem said, ushering her to a booth.
“You saw me. The other kids looked through me.”
“I should’ve done more.” He took a deep breath, then gave her a little grin, “I had no idea your name was Desiree.”
She widened her eyes at him, “Do not call me that!” She frowned, “Besides, how’d you even know?”
“It said it on your application. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t consider it might be you.”
Dez studied him. “Well, if you were going to remember something from my application, you could’ve chosen something better than my real first name.”
He grinned, “I’ll promise not to tease you about it. I figure you’ve had enough teasing for a lifetime already.” He frowned, “You don’t have to tell me, but I’ve always wondered what happened to you. One day you were there, the next you were gone. The teachers never told us anything and I worried about you. I even tried to find you to see if you were okay. Unfortunately, Google didn’t know where you were and I had no idea how else to search.”
“My mom…” Dez said, pausing to think how much to say. She decided to be honest with Kaem. “…was addicted to meth. She got in a fight over drugs one night and was murdered… well… killed. Probably not fair to call it a murder since the other woman died too.” Dez cleared her throat of the frog she still got remembering that night. “I thought I’d be an orphan since my mom told me we didn’t have any living relatives. However, the social worker found a whole big family that my mom had disavowed. I went to live with my aunt in Ohio and she raised me.”
“Ah,” Kaem said, sounding as if from that meager story he understood everything that’d happened. He doesn’t, she thought, but he can probably assemble a pretty good summary.
The waitress took their orders, then Kaem turned his attention back on her. “You’ve got the job if you want it,” he hesitated, “as soon as we get the money anyway.”
“You’re not going to interview me?”
“I know you, Dez. Know you far better than I could from any interview.”
“And I can get hired just on your say so?”
He grinned. “Not if we don’t have the money. But after that, yes, pretty much.” He frowned, “Do you need a job right now?”
She shook her head. “I live cheap and make pretty good money so I’ve got quite a bit saved up. But I was going to stay on with Ledger and Ledger until you do hire me, is that okay?”
“Sure, we’ll let you know.”
“Um, and I’d want to give them at least their two weeks’ notice.”
He nodded, “Good.”
“Ms. Vaii said you were interviewing now so you could quickly fill positions once your cash flow improves. Are you waiting for a grant to come through or something?”
He grinned at her. “Are you going to work for us?”
She gave him a startled look. “Of course!”
“And you’ll keep our secrets even if you change your mind?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well then, we should be casting a rocket for Space-Gen soon. Our payday for that will be millions of dollars. Then we’ll be able to afford to hire expensive engineers like you.”
Dez sat back and studied the far wall unseeingly. “Rockets. I can see that. Of course, I heard you were making engines because Stade would tolerate the heat of a rocket exhaust without melting. But Stade would also be proof against the high radiation out in space and it’d be perfect insulation for cryogenic tankage.”
Kaem gave her a slow nod. “You’re just as quick as I hoped.”
Her eyes widened, “And low mass! If you make it out of vacuum Stade you’ll have less mass to accelerate.” Her eyes widened further, “And easier landings, since, once the fuel’s burned, the rocket’s mass will be close to zero.” Her eyes returned to his, “That is so cool. What other projects do you have in the works? Just thinking about what you could do is exciting.”
“What engineering projects do you think we should be undertaking?”
She could feel the smile spread across her face. “Well, someday I want to build myself a house on a thirty-foot-high, one-millimeter diameter pillar so I’ll have a great view and no one can get in without my say so.”
“How would you get in?”
She grinned. “The whole house lowers itself down to ground level. When it does it connects to power, water, and sewer. It’ll need to top off and empty its storage.”
“What else?”
“Horizontally drill Stade pipes and tunnels from place to place. Stade’s slippery so you could pull wiring and piping through without much difficulty. That’d get rid of those ugly overhead power and transmission lines and keep hurricanes and earthquakes from cutting power and requiring repairs. Put in Stade seawalls to protect coasts from storm surge. Build really tall buildings, ones so high they’d require Stade foundations. Easily reinforce or replace aging bridges with something that’ll never wear out, though the pavement would need to be replaced occasionally.”
“Wait,” Kaem said, “What was that about Stade foundations?”
She shrugged, “If you’re going to build tall buildings, you need strong foundations.” She grinned, “One way to do it would be to just screw deep into the bedrock.”
“Screw?” he asked just as the waitress returned with their food. He gave her an embarrassed look, “Sorry, we’re talking about engineering
