There Must Be a Mistake Ch. 07

"After I struggle with this thing for five minutes, now you tell me it is held together by a zipper?"

"I didn't think of it before. Remember, I just got married, and I have one big thing on my mind."

"I will forgive you, and give you that big thing as soon as possible."

"Dad my friends have left can we go now?"

"Your wish is our command Master Gordon. Did your young ladies mention your shirt?"

"Yes they did dad. They thought it was cute. Brandy said I was cute. She is six years old. Is she too old for me?"

Jennifer nearly lost her last meal, whenever that was. She was laughing so hard, I had to help her remained standing. I helped Gordon into his seat, and made sure my wife was safely buckled in. I did not want to lose her now.

As I was driving my thoughts returned to my daughter. I was not worried about her; I was happy for her. Maybe she was ready for sex, maybe not, but that was not my decision to make. If it was Grayson she picked, he was a good man. If she decided to wait, again that was her choice. I didn't expect to see them at the party one way or the other. Gray wanted to talk about their future, but he is smart enough to know her boundaries. Only time will tell.

"Husband, what you grinning about?"

"Wife, exactly what you think I am thinking about. I'm very happy for her."

"This is a sudden change in attitude. May I ask what caused it?"

I prepared myself for what was to come. "NO!"

She didn't hit me; I didn't know why. Maybe it was the ring on her finger. Should I ask her? Hell no, I'm not out of my mind; yet.

She sat there smiling contentedly, and I watched her carefully. Every time I turned, her smile got bigger. Finally, I have to ask, "Why are you smiling?"

"You are so easy Even. You are just dying to tell me, and you were hoping I would beg to hear it. We have 30 more miles to get to Denver. You don't have a prayer of getting there without telling me the entire story."

From the back seat my little traitor chimed in. "Is this part of the spider story dad?"

"Gordon do you remember the rules about not telling women our secrets? You just broke one of the rules."

"I thought the rules only referred to them being late all the time."

"You are killing me Gordon. There is a woman in the front seat, and she is not supposed to hear this."

"She's not a woman daddy, she's my mommy."

I was dead; just bury me next to my sister. Jennifer had a look on her face of complete and utter victory. She had not yet fired her first shot, and I was mortally wounded.

"Tell me the spider story Gordon."

In perfect detail, my son did. The blade pierced my heart in the left ventricle. I would bleed out in 18 minutes.

"Tell me the late story Gordon."

"Which one mommy; there are three stories about women being late."

"Tell me all of them, one at a time, and don't leave anything out."

"I never leave anything out mommy."

He didn't. Not a verb, adverb, consonant, or vowel, not a word was missing, or an inflection of my voice. My son had eviscerated me from groin to gullet. I must have looked like that poor young deer I had killed in the forest. Only I was not bleeding, because my heart had pumped its last ounce of blood onto the floor."

"Is that all daddy told you about women today?"

"No, daddy told me about the difference between the hemispheres of the brain."

I pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and stopped the car. I turned and said, "Gordon if you say one more word I am going to walk in front of the car and lie down. I'm going to let your mother drive over me, then back up over me. I will let her repeat this process until there is nothing left of me. Are we okay now?"

"Yes dad, we are fine."

"Thank you Gordon." I pulled out onto the roadway and continued our trip.

Jennifer's smile was so wide I thought her face would crack.

"WHAT?"

"I love being married to you Even. I have enough ammunition to last me until our 10^th anniversary. From your reaction to the hemisphere speech, if I ever get it out of him, I have you for the rest of my life."

I reached over and did something I wanted to do since we met. I squeezed her breast. The smile on her face evaporated, and her bright eyes turned to smoke.

"Bastard."

Here comes the cavalry. "Mommy owes the pretzel jar $10."

"She will owe a lot more before this evening is over. She has to obey the honor code or she will be in trouble?"

"Yes, everyone obeys the honor code. It wouldn't be right if mommy didn't."

"So far, my love, you owe $70 to that jar. The rules of the house go like this: the pretzel jar; then safety, water, and food. The pretzel jar always goes first."

"Gordon, close your eyes and cover your ears."

"Mommy you are going to go over $100. No one has ever done that before; not even Delicious when she is angry, and she gets angry a lot."

"Thank you for that information Gordon, now cover your ears and close your eyes."

"Okay, dad you are going to have to keep count."

"I will, I promise."

Jennifer asked, "Can you hear me Gordon?"

"No mommy, I can't hear you."

"How were you able to answer my question if you couldn't hear me?"

"I think I'd better do a better job covering my ears."

"So do I, because if you hear what I say to your dad, you are going to get a spanking from both of us."

You could see him compress the palms of his hands against his ears. It wasn't necessary to ask him again if he could hear us.

"Even, I will follow your stupid rules as long as you fuck me into oblivion. I have waited a long time for tonight, please don't disappoint me."

"Jennifer if you believe you have waited a very long time think about me. I have a 17-year-old daughter I never knowingly took part in creating. Almost 18 years of abstinence to your four-year drought. I may not know what I am doing, but I learn very quickly. What I learn I don't forget. Tell me if you like something. If you don't like something tell me. We will make one hell of a team after the first few weeks. I will know your body like I know my laboratory. There will not be one millimeter of you I will not know intimately. I know the human body in total. I will know your body better than that. I will not disappoint you, not now, not ever. I will bet every penny I have on that statement. I have a little surprise for you a little bit later on. I love you. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you on the airplane. When you opened the door to your home near Fairbanks my heart was so full of love for you I could've taken you on the floor then and there. Unfortunately Michael needed me more desperately than my desperate desire for you. I wished I had not promised God and myself to wait until today to have you, but I did. We made it, and we will appreciate it for the rest of our lives."

Jennifer had tears in her eyes, when my little traitor asked, "Is mommy finished yet; my ears hurt."

Jennifer reached back, tapped him on his knee, and let him know it was okay to open his eyes and release his hands from his ears.

"Did mommy reach $100 dad?"

"No Gordon, she only said one bad word. Mommy owes the pretzel jar $80."

"She has three more days to break the record."

"Are you hoping that your mommy keeps saying bad words?"

He thought about that for a moment and shook his head. "Mommy never used to say bad words until she met you. You must be a bad influence on her."

"Have you ever heard the term, 'Opposites Attract, Parallels Repulse?"

"I heard the first part, but not the second part."

"That's because no one knows what it means. If you have two magnets, where one is positively charged, and the other is negatively charged, when you put them in close proximity to each other they will connect. 'Opposites Attract.'

However, if you take two magnets, charge them both positively, if you put them in close proximity to each other, they will push themselves apart. 'Parallels Repulse.' Sometimes your mother and I are opposites. At other times we are parallels. We have only known each other for a short time. We will work our way together until we are both 'Neutrally Charged.' We will neither be forced together nor forced apart. We will both be individuals, who love each other, and love our independence from each other. Your mother will go snow skiing, while I ride my snowmobile. Do you know what that means?"

Gordon looked perplexed. "No dad, I have no idea what it means."

"The answer is very easy Gordon. It means we both love snow."

"Dad that was a very long explanation for a very short answer."

"I bet you could repeat every word of it."

"Why would I want to?"

"You would be the only person in the room to know that 'Opposites Attract, Parallels Repulse, and why."

*******

The valet congratulated us, and took our car away. The three of us went up to the top floor of the hotel, where Rod did his introductory speech again. He was more humble this time.

We walked in to a thunderous round of applause, and the tapping of glasses. I immediately complied by kissing my bride.

Gordon pulled on my sleeve, and asked if he could join his two friends, who were waving at him. I set him free and reminded him he was going home with Roz and Rod this evening. There was no sign of Delicious and Gray , and I was not surprised.

The orchestra started playing, and I took my wife into my arms and began to dance with her.

Jennifer put her head against my chest. I knew she could feel the beat of my heart, because I was so happy, and so in love with her. We moved slowly around the floor, my two left feet never leaving the ground for fear of crushing hers. I kept kissing the top of her head, and telling her how much she meant to me, and my new life. She set me free from the burdens of my past, and I could never do enough to repay her for this wonderful kindness. By the time our dance ended she was crying. I handed her a handkerchief to dry her eyes, and when she composed herself she said, "Even Luck, I don't care if you know both your parents, you are still a bastard."

I couldn't help but laugh, and when I did she hit me. Our guests roared with laughter.

The orchestra continued playing as we circulated around the room visiting friends, guests, and colleagues. I knew I would find him, or he would find me, but Doctor Oyster congratulated both of us before he asked about his program. I told him that my daughter, Delicious, found five flaws in the program, and we had someone else look at it, and he found seven.

Oyster roared, "Bullshit, the program is perfect as it is. We ran it through the computer three more times since we spoke to you, and it came out without a flaw."

"Are you going to use those thrusters on Orion?"

"You are not supposed to know about that."

"I just want to know how many people you are going to kill with them."

"You better not be pulling my joint Doctor Luck. We have spent $600 million working on these thrusters. They have to get those men to Mars and back, alive."

"If you leave them the way they are, those men won't make it to Mars, no less make it back. Would you like to meet the man who found the last two flaws in your program?"

"Yes I would, I have a few questions to ask him."

Gordon was holding court with his two little friends when I called him. He ran over to me and asked me if it was important, because he was busy. I told him it was extremely important. I had someone for him to meet. Reluctantly he said, "Okay."

I took him by the hand and brought him to Doctor Oyster. I lifted him and stood him on a chair. I introduced him to Oyster.

"Gordon, this is Doctor Oyster, the man in charge of the Milli-Newton Thrusters. He has some questions he'd like to ask you."

"Even, I don't believe you are trying to pull this gag on me. Let this kid go play with his friends and bring me the man who found the problem with my program."

Gordon said, "I am the man that found the seven problems with your program. Anyone with half a brain could have found them. Apparently you don't have half a brain."

It was not only me that laughed, but the collection of scientists that had gathered around us to listen to the eminent Doctor Oyster take apart the person who questioned his analysis of the thrusters. When it turned out to be a four-year-old boy, the crowd grew exponentially.

Doctor Oyster was not amused by Gordon's outburst, and began asking him questions about the thrusters.

Gordon's answers shocked him to his very core. When he got to the point of the errors in the computations Oyster had to sit down. Gordon listed them, point by point. He explained how each failure would cause a failure in other integral systems. Eventually, these systems would cause the failures of all three life-support systems on Orion. The results would be catastrophic, within 24 hours, and there was no way to fix them because his computations were all wrong.

Gordon received a round of applause from the scientists listening to his explanation of the complex problems associated with the thrusters. Doctor Oyster stood up and joined them. A four-year-old boy had seen problems that he and his entire staff did not see using the best computers and thousands of man-hours of work. He saved six people's lives, using his brain, and 90 minutes of Sequoia' s time.

Oyster looked at me and asked, "Can I borrow him for the next 60 years?"

"I'm sorry Doctor, but you can't have him. He is doing our spatial navigation program. We are building our own starship. We are funding it privately. My daughter is designing a new propulsion system that does not use hydrogen and oxygen to blast us into orbit. We will reach .999 the speed of light as soon as we leave our planetary system. Gordon will pick our destination. I will be doing the mechanical engineering along with Doctor Grayson Thyme. Our first organizational meeting is Monday evening, and our timeframe is 10 years."

"Even it can't be done. 10 years is no time at all. We have been working on getting out of our atmosphere without using hydrogen for decades. We haven't even got close to an answer to that problem yet. How does your daughter anticipate doing that in 10 years?"

"She was going to explain it to me but I asked her not to, because it was too complex. She is an absolute wizard when it comes to that area of science. She scares me at times. So does this little man standing next to me. Four years old, I can't wait to see what happens when reaches eight years old."

"Are we finished dad?"

"I'm sorry Gordon, yes were finished you can go back to your girls."

He jumped off the chair, and was off like a shot. We all laughed.

"What's so funny Even?"

"I told my daughter a few days ago not to have any sex manuals in the house because of him. I told her if he reads them any woman, single or married, West of the Mississippi was in trouble. He's only four years old, and look at him go."

Oyster looked, and saw Gordon with the two pretty young girls.

"One of those girls is six years old. He asked me if she is too old for him."

"Even, after what that boy just did to me tonight, I would believe anything you said about him."

"I have all the discs ready for you to take back to California. Stop by the house, at a reasonably late hour tomorrow. I'll give it to you."

"What time is your organizational meeting?"

"7 o'clock or 7:30 PM, as soon as we finished eating dinner."

" Am I invited to dinner; I'd like to sit in on your meeting."

"You can consider yourself invited for dinner. Please be at the house any time after 3 PM. I'll introduce you to Sequoia, and my daughter, if she's available."

"Will you be able to walk?"

"I certainly hope so."

As many of my colleagues returned to their tables, two eminent physicists, and a propulsion expert asked for invitations to dinner. They wanted to join us at our organizational meeting, also. I extended invitations to them without delay. Delicious predicted this would happen, but I never expected it to happen so soon.

************

As the waiters started bringing out the appetizers, I leaned across my bride, and began talking to Roz. I wasn't saying anything of great importance, it was just a distraction. I took the single edge razor blade out of my pocket, and carefully cut the seam down the side of my brides wedding dress about 18 inches long. I slipped the razor blade back into my pocket and finished talking to my best friend's wife. I never said a thing.

Moments later, Jennifer said, "Oh crap, I ripped my dress. Roz stood up to take a look at what happened. I stood up to get out of the way. Sure enough there was a ripped seam underneath her left arm.

"Jennifer this can't be repaired with a simple needle and thread. This tear is almost 2 feet long."

I said, "Let me call the front desk and see if they have a tailor in the building."

Of course they did, I paid them to have her here. I also had a room reserved for us to wait in while the dress was being repaired.

I returned to Jennifer and said, "We are in luck. The tailor was just about to go home, but the manager was able to stop her. She is waiting for us downstairs to see if she can help you with the dress. Tell your grandmother where were going, and we will be back as soon as the gown is fixed."

Jennifer showed her grandmother the gown, and she was horrified. She wanted to go with her granddaughter, but Jennifer said no.

"Enjoy the party, and I will be back as soon as possible."

I took her arm and we went to the elevator. We went down one floor, and Jennifer looked at me.

"What did you do?"

"The hotel said to go to this room and the tailor would take your dress from here and fix it. Why are you accusing me of having an ulterior motive?"

"I'm sorry I just thought that you did something underhanded."

She just finished saying it as the tailor stepped out of the elevator and walked towards us. She said to Jennifer, "You must get out of the gown. You don't want to miss your entire wedding event."

I used the magnetic key and opened the door to the bridal suite.

"You lying son of a bitch."

"I keep telling you I know both my parents. Now do you want to get undressed, and play house, while your dress is repaired, or do you want to argue?"

"Help me with these God damn buttons."

She was out of her dress in two minutes, and the seamstress was out of the room seconds later. She looked wonderful in white, what there was of it anyhow. A white demi-bra, panty's that did not deserve the name, but probably cost a fortune, suspenders, white silk stockings, and tiny white shoes, with stiletto heels.

She screamed, "Why are you still dressed?"

"I was admiring the view. There is nothing more lovely in this world than what I am looking at."

"Thank you, now get undressed."

I was down to my skin, in less than a minute. I didn't see any reason for half measures.

"Even how could you possibly go all your life, with equipment like that, and not want to use it?"

"No one interested me enough to drive me away from my science. I loved my work and my sister. No one came up to either standard. No one, until I met you. I told you that you set me free of all my past burdens. Divine was one of them. Now do you want to continue talking or would you like me to make love to you for an hour or so?"

"You can undress me anytime you want, anywhere you want. I love you as much as you love me. I love that you love my son as if he was your own."

As I caressed her, I said, "When Rod finishes with Gordon's biological father, he will wish he was never born. Gordon is my son, never doubt that."

I took Jennifer in my arms, and relieved her of her bra. As I moved down her body, I licked and sucked on both of her nipples. She grabbed my hair and moaned in contentment. I kissed her cute little belly button, the swell of her belly, and ripped the panty's from her body. She moaned again, but did not complain about the loss of her undergarment. She was shaved clean as a baby's bottom. I kissed the top of her Mons. She was dripping already, as I spread the lips of her vagina. Her pearl was out from under its hood seeking attention.