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Chapter 10 Outline
When they wake up, they have a leisurely breakfast, recovering from some belated shyness. He suggests they switch to his unit so he can monitor the office during its abbreviated hours today. She considers saying no, to keep him interested, but the allure of continued sex play is too strong. She grabs her briefcase, so she can in theory get some work done whenever he is too busy in the office. They dress and cross the parking lot to his unit above the office. Probably some sort of encounter with another tenant. He collects some more rent checks. She plugs into the internet and starts doing some research on other possible jobs and/or the company her boss is going to work for. They compare notes about past lives. He tells her a little about his real job. She is skeptical, but says little. He can tell. He opens the safe and drops in the rent checks and pulls out some citations and paperwork that clearly support his story. She opens up a bit more, tells stories about her friends. Her boss and Lisa contemplating this company that she's researching. Her friend who is trying to write the great american novel but paying the bills with temp office work and the occasional phone sex script. He tells stories about his buddies, mostly retired these days and doing more sensible things, like teaching martial arts (John) or tending bar (Brad). She comments on how clear, orderly, even austere his place is. He tells her furniture will be arriving soon and describes what it looked like when he moved in. She looks at the few things scattered around that he's had for some time: a prayer rug, some gilded thai porcelain, a kuan yin statue and a hotei figure. A teak trunk, currently in use as a coffee table. Some water colors. He pulls out some polaroids he took to show his boss what condition the place was in when he arrived. They eye the camera speculatively. They eye each other again. They look at the camera again. They blush. They simultaneously ask, "Have you ever" pause "Do you want to" pause. Big grins. "Oh yeah" "Definitely" Nervous commentary on never having had a polaroid and never wanting to take the risk of negatives. They agree to destroy the pictures and the cartridge after they take them but before they separate. He makes sure the damper on the fire place opens and the fire place is clean so they'll have a place to burn them, then recloses the damper. He heats up some more frozen dinners from his bartender buddy (this time curried chicken -- somehow he'd missed it at the back), cooks some rice, steams some vegetables. While wrapping up some work in the office, she runs to the store to buy more film. They eat. They clean up. They continue working on the bottle of white wine they had with dinner as the heat climbs in the apartment (he turned up all the thermostats so they wouldn't get cold) and they start ditching clothes artistically. They start with all over nudes. They move on to closeups. Then they start trying to take pictures of themselves kissing, oralizing, etc. They get distracted and forget the camera. He takes a shot of her looking really spaced after she comes very hard. She gets one of his extremely erect penis. They finish. She tells the Red Dwarf story about Kryten becoming human and taking pictures of his penis and showing them to Lister. He sings the Detachable Penis song to her. They watch a movie, snuggle and eventually go to sleep in the cooling apartment (still haven't burned the photos). [Chapter 10 as written has diverged massively. Which I am very sorry about, but I like the new Chapter 10 and I'm going to leave it. I think I can continue with Chapter 11 with no particular concerns.]
Chapter 11 Outline
Monday (lunch/phone calls with friends bringing them up to date and collecting largely negative commentary) The Day Drags on bringing Disturbing Doubts
When Joanna wakes up Monday morning, she groggily realizes she needs to get back to her apartment and get ready for work. Hale kisses her goodbye slowly and makes it extremely clear to her that he definitely does not think of this just as a weekend fling, but would like to keep seeing her/sleeping with her, whatever she's willing to do. The warm fuzzy feeling lasts through her shower, as she gets dressed, and most of the way through her morning commute. But as she pulls into the parking lot at work, it hits her. She didn't run any of the errands she had planned for the weekend (which included looking for a new apartment, which she no longer is inclined to do, but never mind that now). She forgot to call her parents, which she almost always did on Sunday night. Of course they often bugged her for not being busier on the weekends than she was, and wouldn't worry, but still. And there were a few things she'd meant to buy for around the house. A lightbulb to replace a lamp that was out in the living room. The toner on her printer at home was out. And she hadn't cleaned her apartment now for three weeks in a row; it was getting noticeably dusty.
She realizes that she's just agitated because for once in her life, she completely blew off her life for a couple of days and was mindlessly social. She had, after all, gotten around to doing some research on the web for jobs, and she'd looked over the classifieds in the Sunday carefully, both for real estate prices in Seattle, apartments in Seattle, and jobs in Seattle.
She gets through the morning in a slight daze. Christene and Kathryn both notice she's acting a little weird and pry some of the details out of her. They both think it's cool she went on a date (two dates in one weekend, really!), but have a lot of doubts when she has no real answers to their questions about what Hale does for a living. They both think he's too old for her. Kathryn thinks she shouldn't start dating anyone until after she's moved, but screwing around is okay as long as he isn't psycho. Christene (who doesn't know she's planning on leaving) is a lot more worried, in part because she can't imagine Joanna seeing anyone in a non-serious way.
Joanna notices that Christene is a little tired and snappy. She wonders what's up to put the circles under her eyes, and to make her show up unusually late (didn't come in until lunchtime) and then drink extra diet cokes. Concerned, she encourages Christene to go home early and rest. Joanna is worried about the project Christene is working on -- if she's out sick, nothing will happen in time for the weekend -- but she doesn't say anything out loud.
Details about the office environment that could be used here: diet soda cans overflowing in garbage, a papasan and/or old couch in someone's cube or office. A target from a gun range with a tight grouping taped to a cube or office wall (maybe Christene's?), a star wars lego model assembled and sitting on top of someone's monitor.
Hale realizes around lunchtime that he's been puttering happily through his usual routine without once thinking to call to pester his boss. Brad calls him around 2 p.m. before going in to work to shoot the shit. He notices a difference in Hale's tone (and is surprised he can't draw Hale into speculating further and, lacking more data, that's all they can do right now). He pries; Hale divulges relatively freely. He trusts Brad, and he's feeling somewhat smug about the weekend. Brad's a bit mystified that Hale is now so sure that he's going to be retiring and is asking for any advice Brad might have about how to get referrals for students and so forth, and where best to locate a school. Brad's very skeptical that Joanna, as described, could possibly be serious about Hale, and is worried that Hale is in for a severe let down. While he wants Hale to quit the service and make plans for the future, he doesn't want those plans attached to a young, foolish, prissy young woman who is going to hurt his friend by freaking out when she realizes Hale's actual background.
The late afternoon for Hale and Joanna drags a bit. They anticipate getting home. They didn't make specific plans, but each hopes the other will be interested in at least dinner and maybe curling up to watch TV or a video together. Both have worries that they had before, but that have been reinforced by friends. Both make a conscious effort to set those aside, and enjoy the present for now. Hale knows that he needs to get out of his overly exciting, testosterone laden, risk taking life and settle down to a steady living with a fixed address. Joanna knows that she needs to get out of her predictable rut, and into the mainstream of risk-taking, get to know new people socializing and dating. Each hopes the other will provide an easy transition and refuses to worry about the future beyond that.
Hale goes out to the video store to pick up a recent release that Joanna hadn't seen in the theatre and wanted to see that he's also interested in (what should it be? Maybe the video release of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).
Hale sees Joanna drive into the lot. He's been nursing a single beer carefully for the last hour waiting for her to get home. It's warm, but it still tastes pretty good. The hops taste even stronger which, to his way of thinking, is a good thing. It's the only one he has had all day. He gives her about a quarter of an hour to settle in, take her shoes off, get comfortable, decompress, then he calls her.
Joanna gets home, notices a single message on her answering machine. As expected, her parents called to say how happy they were that she had a busy weekend, and not to worry about calling them but to have a great time, along with a smattering of mundane details about what they were doing. No message from Hale. Vaguely disappointed, she changes into leggings and a comfy silk tunic and fixes herself a cup of tea. About half way through the cup of tea, her phone rings. It's Hale.
After greetings, a long silence stretches. Hale asks what she's doing for dinner. She says she has no particular plans, but notes it's her turn to cook. Hale is surprised -- he hadn't considered heating up Brad's dinners as cooking, but is overjoyed to accept her offer to fix dinner. He offers to bring over the movie.
Watch movie, stop part way through to fix dinner, eat dinner while watching rest of movie. Go hot tubbing, swap stories about friends reactions to hearing about dating. Dance around how serious they are, but both firmly note that they are going to blow through the objections of friends without really exploring why. Mentally each very fearful of scaring the other away by saying the wrong thing, and also uneasy about feeling so sure about each other without any good reason to. Lock up, hang out and neck a bit, retire to her place. Happy happy happy all around.
Chapter 12 Outline
A week whizzes by ; friends meet the new love interest and emit further commentary; meanwhile co-worker is plotting Our Heroine's Future Unemployment
On Tuesday, Christene bounces into Joanna's office, fully rested after a very short Monday. She's got a prototype of the feature up and running and wants Joanna to try it out and see what she thinks. Joanna is shocked. How did it get done this fast? Christene was in almost all of the weekend -- that's why she was so tired Monday. She hadn't said anything, because she'd broken it very late Sunday/early Monday morning and was too depressed to talk about it, and kept finding bugs in it all day Monday, but in a few hours, fully rested, on Tuesday morning, she got all the major bugs out of the way. They contact someone in QA to hammer on it.
Hale starts running again. He has lunch with his friend John. John gives some advice about starting a school in the area, and endorses Hale's interest -- says if he wants to work for John for a while at first to get the hang of the business, that'd be great for him. Hale notices that John is either vague, inarticulate, or ignorant about some business-specific details (local taxes and licensing, for example, liability and insurance issues). Hale drops the conversation after a bit, but decides to do some research later on. John points him at a list-server for martial arts school owners, instructors etc. (NAPMA related?), then changes the subject to suggest that Mrs. William Vaughn the Second is in fact responsible for following them around and attacking Hale and murdering Jack (who murdered Third). The mother of one of Loser the Third's children suggested this possibility when John tracked her down and called her on the phone. Hale disbelieves. John asks if his boss has any further news. Hale says he has no idea -- hasn't talked to anyone since Friday and is under orders not to contact anyone.
On Wednesday, the news that Kathryn is leaving is publicly announced. Management wants her to stick around for a couple weeks to wrap some things up. Kathryn had been hoping they'd give her the two weeks and tell her to leave, but no dice. They're still trying to come up with a compensation package good enough to keep her. The tester finds a bunch of problems with Christene's feature.
Hale goes to the library and finds some books about starting a small business in Washington state.
By Thursday morning, Christene has the known bugs fixed, and the tester is having trouble finding more. By end of day, the feature has passed the regression tests, and the initial tests of the feature that had already been designed. The tester will keep coming up with new stress tests. Joanna has one of the other programmers review the code with Christene. The other programmer wants some minor changes made, to better factor the code into reusable objects. By this time, rumors are flying around the company, and Anthony finally catches wind of what's up. He confronts Christene, is interrupted by Joanna, who tells him he has to talk to her if he has issues with what her reuports are doing. She listens to what he has to say, then says they will discuss it at the meeting on Friday. Mostly, he insists it'll never work. Joanna assumes he hasn't talked to QA yet.
Hale calls some schools in Everett and in Seattle and, presenting himself as a customer of what he's proposing to offer in his own school, asks what those schools might offer that's close, and how much they charge for it. He arranges to attend a few of demonstration/open houses/tournaments over the next week or two. In between phone calls, Brad reaches him, asks why the phone is so busy. Hale gives a synopsis, Brad says cool, and suggests he should talk to Elaine since she gets all this business stuff (her degree is in business? maybe she even consults for small businesses, like Camilla). He invites Hale over for a bbq on Saturday afternoon (when Hale's assistant can cover for him in the office). Hale temporizes; Brad extends the invite to Joanna, commenting that he didn't realize things were that serious. Hale temporizes further, Brad says whatever and hangs up.
By noon on Friday, the modified code has passed the tester, and been checked in as non-production code, vetted by a peer programmer, okayed by QA and signed off on by the appropriate manager. With docs, code, and a working demo, Joanna is ready to confront an extremely peeved Anthony, who has nevertheless fully come up to speed on the idea that he has lost this battle. As expected, in the meeting itself he acts as if it was all his idea and attempts to take credit and in no way tries to prevent the feature from rolling. He doesn't even push for what he had originally wanted. Joanna doesn't feel as relieved as she thought she would.
After the meeting, Christene, Kathryn, Amy, Joanna all agree to meet for beer and pizza. When Joanna realizes everyone is dragging their date-of-the-moment along, she calls Hale to invite him to join them. Over pizza, Joanna belatedly realizes that Kathryn's date is already employed by Abracadabra.com -- she wonders if that was a factor in Kathryn getting the job, accepting the job, or just a spur of the moment opportunity. They don't seem intimate yet, but with Kathryn it can be hard to tell. Amy's husband Jim shows up. Christene surprises everyone by showing up with an incredibly good looking, muscular guy who dresses almost as badly as she does. Joanna eventually places him as an electrical engineer also employed by Taille. The group spends a while sizing each other up. In the bathroom, they all give him a thumbs-up on appearance and ability to socialize, reluctantly acknowledging that they'd be all over him if it weren't for the shady background. Hale relays the invite to Joanna, who is both happy and worried about the invite. Married friends of Hale's -- that sounds like she's going to be inspected. And a former service buddy, that sounds a little scary, but he's married with kids so how bad can that be. Of course she accepts and they grin stupidly at each other.
Chapter 13 Outline
Hale and Joanna have a leisurely weekend. He works the morning. She runs a few of those errands she had meant to do last week. She catches up with Kelly, who she's been too busy to hang out with lately. She finally returns a phone call to her cousin Jackie, and explains that the date went horribly and asks why she was set up in the first place.
Cousin hems and haws and says Carson is somehow related to Jackie's boss at work and Jackie was trying to get in good. Joanna rolls her eyes, points out that it backfired, and suggests not involving her in future plans of that sort.
They go to the bbq. As expected, Elaine and Brad look Joanna over, and decide that while she's a little young, she's not that young and after some discussion they hear the story of the blind date and in dribs and drabs, realize that her dad worked for a police department, and she's grown up shooting and generally isn't quite as naive as they had feared. Everyone thaws out, and she's good with the kids and the kids love "Uncle" Hale who is strong enough to pick them up and turn them upside down and toss them up in the air and catch them. No one is quite sure how seriously to take any of this, but they have a good time anyway.
They get back late, but happy. Sunday is a very mellow day. Monday it's back to work -- Kathryn's last week on the job. What is Anthony plotting? Hmmm. I think he's going to go for a preemptive press release -- and he's going to put out the release he'd prepared for the feature he wanted. That way, when the feature rolls as is, people will be gosh, this wasn't what we were promised. Anthony can then say, see, I told you this is what they wanted, and Joanna will look back for not delivering. Since the Anthony-Joanna feud has been gossip fodder for a bit, when marketing (in the form of Anthony) tries to get the [job title? dude responsible for media contact] to release it, she stalls and says not tonight; wait till tomorrow blah blah. Then she calls Joanna to find out what's up. Joanna says that's the wrong press release and has it stalled; this infuriates Anthony who turns it into a jurisdictional issue. This all happens Monday/Tuesday.
Sunday night, the office was broken into. Hale looks it over, then cleans up without reporting it to the police on Monday. Debates about whether to tell Joanna -- has to tell her something because he's going to stake out the office Tuesday night. They both eventually spill their guts. She suggests they hang out at the spa, make a big fuss about going back to her unit, then sneak back into the office and lie in wait for the bad guy. Meanwhile, she's unhappy because it looks like Anthony is just going to backstab her until hell freezes over or she leaves the company (which she's not sure will actually happen).
Hale has a suggestion for dealing with the coworker that appalls then fascinates her. It basically amounts to setting up a web cam in her office and then inviting Anthony in to discuss the matter and see if he does anything incriminating and, ideally, have appropriate people watching offsite -- best if they don't know they're supposed to be waiting for something to happen, so it looks spontaneous. Come up with a cover story for the camera: experimenting with it for videoconferencing, or as a cheap way to deal with security/petty theft problems or whatever.
Joanna isn't all that impressed with the security/videoconferencing idea, but she has an alternative plan. Sometimes they have users come in and try out products to see how they actually interact with them. Usually they have a fully separate video camera set up, but they could use a web cam for that and it might be easier to tie the streaming video to the archives screen shots. She gets a bit lost considering the idea, wondering out loud if anyone is marketing that as a package deal. Hale brings her back to the here and now in.
She's going to run it past Kathryn and Christene before implementing it, during which it will morph further. Christene says, ha, I have a better idea. You take a long lunch, I'll sneak into your office and set it up. You won't even know it happened (officially). I'm just pulling a prank. I brag to some coworkers, and we all just "happen" to see you have this meeting with Anthony during which he exposes himself for the ass we know he is.
They spend Monday night separately. He stakes out his office. She sleeps alone at her place. Neither is particularly happy.
Chapter 14 Outline
Tuesday/Tuesday night
Joanna runs the idea past Kathryn and Christene before implementing it, during which it morphs further. Christene says, ha, I have a better idea. You take a long lunch, I'll sneak into your office and set it up. You won't even know it happened (officially). I'm just pulling a prank. I brag to some coworkers, and we all just "happen" to see you have this meeting with Anthony during which he exposes himself for the ass we know he is.
Antics ensue. Christene ropes a couple of other people in, during which we discover that Christene actually has some pretty high level executive contact -- and not just because of her tits. Joanna gets Anthony to open up through a combination of goading and sympathetic listening. He cops to malicious intent with the press release, noting that it hardly matters, because no one will ever believe her if she tries to tell anyone since after all no one listens to Joanna except her boss Kathryn who is headed out the door. Anthony suggests Joanna will follow her shortly. Joanna wonders if he knows anything, then realizes he's actually threatening her. Joanna gets him out of her office, then sits and feels sorry for herself for a few minutes before finding Christene. As she's about to go looking for them, Christene and co. crowd in, along with someone from HR who has received the short form of what happened. They ask Joanna a few questions, who displaces her surprise as quick action to surprise at _anyone_ watching (ohmigod there was a camera in her?). Christene winks. Anthony won't be fired over this, but he loses all reports, and quite a lot of responsibility. Christene gets a note put in her file for pulling pranks again; she hardly cares.
Joanna insists on tagging along on the stakeout tonight.
While staking out the office that night, Joanna whispers the story to Hale. He's impressed with Christene's further modification of his idea, and happy to hear it worked out well. No bad guy -- they have sex instead.
The next morning, after Joanna leaves for work, Hale gets a call from his boss: the bad guy has been dealt with. He isn't as happy as he expected to be. His boss is surprised, too, wondering what's up. Hale arranges to stay out on leave a little longer. Boss is happy -- he thinks Hale should retire. Hale tells boss a little about thoughts on opening a school. Boss is overjoyed -- they can always use more instructors, even freelance. Hale knows he's going to need to talk to Joanna about this, but doesn't want to until she hears back from Kathryn.
Chapter 15 Outline
Wednesday/Thursday largely uneventful. Hale drives around Seattle some scouting locations. Joanna is madly trying to catch up on her regular work, which has suffered between the new feature which has now rolled out, and the shenanigans with Anthony.
Friday is Kathryn's last day. Going away lunch. Kathryn asks to see Joanna after work and hand-delivers an offer. Joanna is shocked. What, no interview? Kathryn had passed along Joanna's resume, and several years worth of very positive reviews from her file (sorry that was a little illegal, but I figured you'd be okay with it). The guy she dragged along to pizza and beer last week had been asking her such detailed questions for a purpose, it turns out. The offer is great. Joanna asks for a little time to think about it.
Joanna wants to tell Hale, but not until he knows what he's going to be doing. Hale wants to tell Joanna, but not until she knows what she's going to be doing. This could go on forever. They finally both take the plunge and after much stumbling around, communicate their news. Neither knows what they want to do. Neither wants to say they want to make sure whatever they do, they do it together. Both wants to hear the other say it first. This could go on forever, but they officially both have good news to celebrate. They call around to mutual friends and invite everyone over for a pool party (warmest Saturday night yet this spring/summer). Antics ensue. Kelly and Amy exchange appalling stories. John and Kathryn eye each other with guarded enthusiasm. Elaine and Joanna simultaneously note what a bad idea that is. John demonstrates some new fingerlocks to Hale and Brad and Dave. Kelly's two and Elaine's two slowly make nice. Kelly and Dave's friend Todd shows up (he was coming over to see Dave, so they invited him along). Christene and Todd seem to hit it off.
Kelly, Kathryn, Christene and Amy are all quite pleased that Hale has such cool friends (but some are confused, thinking Todd is one of his friends -- he's not, but they hit it off well, also) and maybe Dave too (ditto). They conclude that Joanna has exaggerated how shady Hale's background is. She must have misunderstood. He's a great guy, a little old, but doesn't act old. She should follow her heart, but remember she'll probably be moving to Seattle, right? This is a slight surprise to Kelly, since she didn't think that Joanna had decided yet. Joanna says she hasn't decided yet.
Eventually everyone leaves, and Joanna and Hale clean up. In the dark, near the pool the couple is attacked by more minions of the bad guy. They deal with them (send them limping home, for the most part, but not until they get a name out of one of them -- it really was mrs. william vaughn the second that hired them, and she didn't even bother to use a cutout). Have mad sex, worry about future home/future together.
Chapter 16 Outline
Joanna tries to contact Loser's mom; learns she is out of town. Finagles where she went to; discovers she's in a hotel in Seattle. Goes down to find her, confronts her. Let's her know what's going to happen if she doesn't knock it off and go home, but if she does go home, they won't try to get her nailed for doing the enforcer. Mom is chilled at the thought; agrees to back off.
Hale doesn't know this is happening at all, until Joanna tells him. He about has a heart attack, lays into her for taking an insane risk, not consulting, etc. Backs into expressing his love for her while very, very scared and angry.
Long quiet bit, then Hale says he knows that it isn't fair to ask a partner to accept the other person taking this kind of risk, so he's quitting his job and is going to open a school. He brings her up to date on his research and intentions, and says wherever she is is where he'll open the school.
Joanna doesn't know what to think. Every wonderful guy she's ever dated left town to go to school, or in search of a job or whatever, rather than stay with her. They didn't even invite her along -- just sort of expected they'd go their separate ways. The idea that Hale is willing to make these changes for her, and to adapt to her life and her needs thrills her to the core. Have mad sex. Dream of future life together, possibly with small children.
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Copyright 2013 by Rebecca Allen Updated July 17, 2013