The waitress grinned at him. “Sure, you are, Kaem. Sure, you are.”
Dez thought it a good sign that the waitress knew his name and kidded around with him. Once the woman was gone Dez said, “Instead of pouring concrete, you’d get your foundation by screwing in big screws, meters wide and hundreds of meters deep. Since fixation of a screw depends on the relative strength of the materials, you’d use a very thin, widely spaced thread on your impossibly-strong Stade screw so there’d be relatively more rock caught within the tread. That way the—relatively—weak rock would be less likely to fail. You’d screw it in really deep to widely distribute the leverage on it when the building tries to rip the screw out.”
Kaem frowned and lifted a finger. “Problem. Stade’s frictionless so those screws would tend to come unscrewed.”
She shook her head, “Not once they’re attached to neighboring screws. Once that’s done, they’ll keep each other from rotating.”
Kaem smacked his palm to his forehead. “Of course. Sorry.”
She grinned at him. “No worries. Once you’ve given this some thought you’ll get the hang of it.”
He rolled his eyes, then grinned back. “I can’t believe we’re hiring another wise-ass woman to ride my case.”
Dez leaned back in her seat and smiled at him. “I think you like it.”
~~~
When they finished eating—without reminiscing about the old times that were so painful for both of them—Kaem offered to get her an Uber back to wherever she was staying.
A little embarrassed, Dez said, “I move around a lot and need to haul stuff pretty often, so I bought my own vehicle. It’s parked at Staze. I can call it down here to get us…” She glanced at him out of the side of her eye, “Or I could walk back to Staze with you.”
He grinned, “I need the exercise.”
Back at Staze, he exclaimed over her pickup. “Gunnar’s gonna be jealous,” he said, without explaining who Gunnar was.
He hugged her goodbye. This time her head wasn’t exploding with emotion. When he gave her a tight squeeze, she was stunned to realize every contact point with him was solid muscle. All she could think was, Holy shit, he’s hard as a rock! There’s no way he needed to walk back here for exercise!
As her truck drove her back to Richmond, she kept thinking about how he’d seemed weak back in school. In fact, I thought he was sickly and soft. But, not anymore!
***
Arya looked up when her computer chimed. She’d chosen this chime because it sounded like a coin falling in a metal cup—which was weird, she reflected, since hardly anyone used coins anymore. In any case, the sound told her there’d been a deposit of more than a half-million dollars at MBB She asked, “What was the deposit?”
The computer popped open a small window showing a million dollars had arrived from Space-Gen. Alright! she thought, slumping in her chair at the sudden release of stress. We’re back in the black! she told herself. She started arranging to pay off the credit line.
She glanced out the window toward the street from which Kaem hadn’t yet returned. Hopefully that Lanis woman hasn’t talked Kaem into spending some more money we don’t have.
***
Richter and Joe walked into Bob’s office. “We watched that video, Boss.”
Bob leaned back in his chair. “What’d you think?”
“Slippery, super-strong stuff? I’d like a sheet of it under my shirt to stop bullets.”
Bob arched an eyebrow as if he hadn’t thought of that. “Okaay. I guess I would too. But wouldn’t you like to have the goose that lays the golden eggs, not just an egg?”
“Not sure what you mean?”
Bob pulled the video up on the big screen on the wall of his office. A few words to his computer and it jumped past all the stuff with the young black guy talking and on to a point he’d specified. He pointed. “See this big silvery box? That’s what makes the Stade. I’m thinkin’ I’d like to have one of them. Then we could make as much of the stuff as we like.”
“Oh…” Richter said with dawning realization. “You know where we might be able to pick one up?”
“I know Staze, the company that makes ’em, is in Charlottesville. Why don’t you and Joe mosey on down there and check it out? See how it’s guarded. What kind of building it’s kept in. All that. Maybe one of those machines’ll fall off their loading dock and you could pick it up.”
“Yes, Mr. Marona.”
***
Grace had rented a tiny house on the sand in Virginia Beach. She and Simone had stayed in it almost every year until Simone got sick. Grace really missed her this time and wondered whether it was unfaithful to have come without her. We should’ve come down here this year too, Grace thought, as she walked slowly along, eyes down, looking for shells to add to Simone’s collection. Though, not this late in the season, she reflected, tugging her jacket tighter.
She’d gone about a mile and had turned to walk back when her phone vibrated. After a moment she pulled it out. “Carl Welch,” the screen said.
“Dammit,” she cursed, wondering whether to answer it. I owe it to Simone, she decided, and said, “Phone, begin recording, then I’ll take the call… Hello Carl.”
“Where the hell are you?!” Carl said, sounding furious.
“I’m at the beach. Simone and I used—”
“I told you I was coming to see you!”
Keeping an even tone, Grace said, “Yeah, then you hung up without giving me a chance to tell you I’d be out of town.”
“You couldn’t stay home to talk to Simone’s brother?!”
“I was talking to him on the phone, but he kept interrupting me, then he hung up on me… It wasn’t a pleasant experience.”
“You could’ve called me
