In keeping with the idea that she wanted to support Rick every way she could, Jane got up when the alarm went off the next morning. The plan was for her to drive him to work, so she could have the car for grocery shopping – not that she really trusted him driving her car anyway, at least from what he’d told her about the way he drove. He really couldn’t be that bad, she thought, but now was not the time to find out.

Since there really wasn’t the time to play this morning, she pulled on underwear, a short skirt, and a camisole just to look pretty for him and to give him something to look forward to when he came home. If she was going to be working around the apartment much of the day she might pull on shorts and a T-shirt when she got home, but she’d change back into the nicer clothes before she went to pick him up.

As it turned out there wasn’t much in the apartment that would serve for breakfast besides coffee and breakfast cereal, so they agreed to do a drive-through for a breakfast sandwich.

She hadn’t been to Comsector before, and didn’t even have a good idea where it was, but at least Rick knew, so shortly before eight she pulled her car to a stop in front of the building. “Have a good day, Rick,” she smiled. “Don’t let Sophia weasel too much about our honeymoon out of you.”

“I’ve thought about that a little,” he laughed. “Maybe it would work better if I gave her too much detail, like how cute that little mole down below your bikini line is, and how much I like to look at it. And what’s around it, of course.”

“Oh, Rick!” she grinned. “That might be a little too much.” She paused for a moment thinking about it, then added, “it might work, though.”

“It might give her the message,” he agreed. “But with Sophia, you never know. Love you Jane.”

“I love you too, Rick. I’ll be thinking about you all day, and I’ll see you tonight. Call me if you want to be picked up at some other time than five.”

“Unless this consultation Sophia was talking about turns into something, it probably won’t happen. See you later.” He gave her a kiss before he got out of the car and headed into the building.

Jane got her car moving again and started out of the parking lot, feeling just a little strange. This would be the first time in over two weeks she wouldn’t be right with Rick all the time, unless a bathroom was involved, or one or the other of them was sleeping, as had occasionally happened at Lunahilo Bay.

Since it was early and she was dressed to go out, on the way home she headed for a nearby supermarket to fill out the groceries. She wound up buying quite a bit, mostly leaning toward the easy-to-prepare end of things. Real cooking was something she was going to have to work her way up to.

Back at the apartment, she pulled on the shorts and T-shirt she’d promised herself, then turned to putting the groceries away and rearranging things in the kitchen to suit her while she ran a couple loads of laundry in the apartment’s washer and dryer. Once that was done, she put them away, rearranging her closet and dresser a little – not much; Sophia or someone – maybe her daughter – had done a pretty good job.

That pretty well took care of the list of things she had to do for the day. She glanced at the clock to discover that it was only a little after noon. She made herself a sandwich for lunch, and wondered what she could do for the afternoon. The only thing she could think of was to finish the book about the war in the Pacific she’d been reading for two weeks, and there wasn’t much left to finish. She ran through it in less than an hour; on reflection after she finished the last page, she realized that it had been moderately interesting, enough to hold her attention. She’d learned something, although she also realized that she hadn’t gotten everything out of it she could have.

What now? She might have turned on the television, but there wasn’t one in the apartment. She wasn’t much of one to watch TV, and Rick had said he didn’t own one, either. She had a few books, but many of them were about art history, which was a subject she really didn’t want to revisit right now. Maybe, she thought, she ought to go to a bookstore – there was a used bookstore not far from the apartment she’d shared with Madelyn, and she’d been in there a few times. Giving it a good, healthy browsing might be time well spent.

But right at the moment she wasn’t in the mood to do it. For lack of a better idea, she took off her clothes, pulled on a bikini, and headed down to the pool. There weren’t many people around, so she swam a few laps slowly – she was no speed swimmer – then flopped out on a lounge chair to get a little sun, to try to keep her Hawaiian tan alive. When she felt she was pretty near roasted, she got back in the pool, swam a few more laps, and went back upstairs.

There was still too much time before she had to go pick up Rick, so she decided to get dressed for Rick and give the bookstore a try, just to see what she could find. She wound up buying a handful of murder mysteries out of a series; since it was only a couple bucks’ worth, if it didn’t work out, she really wasn’t out anything. That at least got her close to the time she needed to be heading over to Comsector.

She got there a little early and just sat in the car waiting for him. One thing was clear; this part of it wasn’t going to work in the long run, or even the short run. Being a housewife fifty or a hundred years ago had obviously been a hell of a lot more work than it was these days. Granted, she could probably find an hour or so each day of household chores to do, shopping and the like, but it was clear she wasn’t going to be able to fill her days with them.

It was a problem that was going to have to be solved, and soon – but making Rick comfortable with a “normal” life was much more important right now. As the digital clock on the radio crept up to five, she wondered how Rick’s day had gone, and how much Sophia had been able to pry out of him.

Finally, a few minutes after five she saw him come out of the door and head straight to her car, a big smile on his face. “So how was your day?” she asked as soon as he got into the car.

“Amazingly enough, not very bad,” he admitted. “Bill Junco was just about sitting on my desk waiting for me to come in. He had a coding problem that was driving him nuts, and no wonder. It took all day to straighten out, and there are some bells and whistles we need to add on tomorrow. It may have been the best day I’ve had there in months.”

“Well, that’s good,” she said as she started the engine. “So how much about our honeymoon did Sophia worm out of you?”

“Not much,” he smiled. “In fact, I was so busy with Bill that I hardly saw her all day. She asked if she and Rob could take us to dinner tomorrow night. I told her it was probably all right although I’d have to run it past you first.”

“It’s all right with me. We need to be sociable, and there are some things I need to run by her.”

“Such as?”

“Just domestic things, like how long you cook a pot roast for,” she replied as she pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic. “I got a roast today, but I don’t know when we’re going to have it.”

“Wow, homemade pot roast. It’s been a long time.”

“I hope it works out. I’ve never made one but I got the impression from my mother that it’s not all that complicated for how good it tastes.”

“Things just keep getting better and better,” he smiled. “So how was your day?”

“Honestly?” she shook her head. “Dull. I got a few things done that I needed to, but that was about all.”

“Most of my days seem to be like that. Once in a while I get one that isn’t too bad, like today. I know how you must be feeling. What do you have planned for tomorrow?”

“Less than I had for today. I suppose I can get along like that for a while, but I don’t want to have to put up with it for too long.”

“At least you have other things you can do,” he told her. “I’m more or less stuck with sitting there and playing Windows Solitaire or something else equally stupid.”

“I know,” she sighed. “When you get down to it, you have it worse than I do.”

“Well, maybe you can think of something.”

“I sure hope so,” she said, thinking about it. He was right in several ways. He did have it worse than she did, mostly because she did have options of things she could do, but he really didn’t. He either had to stick it out or quit, and, when she got right down to it, whatever he wound up doing would most likely affect what she did. For a number of reasons she knew he had to come first. That was just about implicit, although unwritten, in the deal she’d worked out with Sophia and him.

It was something she would have to think about. She’d known since the beginning that his problem was there, and so far she hadn’t been able to come up with any useful suggestions. But clearly, something had to be done, and whatever it was, she didn’t have a clue.

They fell to talking about dinner – she planned on fried chicken and mashed potatoes, which pushed her cooking skills, if not to the limit. But the question of what to do was never very far from her mind.

Dinner actually worked out pretty well; it came after they made a quick trip to the pool, and then to the bed – it was clear that he hadn’t had his mind entirely on coding all day long, which was part of what she wanted to accomplish, anyway. After dinner, they worked on a few things that needed to be done around the apartment, such as getting their laptops and his home desktop set up and running. Jane was no computer freak; she knew how to turn one on, how to use word processing programs, e-mail, and how to use a browser. She hadn’t done it much recently, but having her laptop running was her best hope for not being bored stiff during the day.

Of course, they went to bed on the early side, and it was a while before they got to sleep. It wasn’t exactly as if it was a chore, after all; in fact, she may have enjoyed it about as much as he did.

Morning came all too soon. After they got dressed, she set to work making scrambled eggs, sausages, and toast, a better breakfast than cereal as far as she was concerned, and more personal than a drive-through breakfast sandwich. They got done in plenty of time for her to drive him to work, but as soon as she’d done that there wasn’t much she could think of to do but go back to the apartment and dig into the murder mysteries she’d bought the day before.

The first one wasn’t bad, but the next one was all too similar to the first one. By the time she went to pick Rick up from Comsector it was clear that her interest in those mysteries was going to run aground very soon. When she asked Rick how his day had gone, he told her it had gone fine up until about mid-afternoon, when he and Junco pretty well wrapped up what they had to do. “It could be days before I have anything else to do,” he said. “I’m really not looking forward to that.”

Once again they took a quick trip to the pool to work the kinks of the day out, afterwards they went back upstairs, took showers, and got dressed nicely for their latish dinner with Rob and Sophia. Jane dressed a little more formally than a sundress, and they left in plenty of time to meet their friends.

For whatever reason, dinner was at Umberto’s again – Rick had said that Sophia really liked the place; Jane thought it was all right but didn’t want to overdo it. It was a little more upscale than the Mountain Grove where Jane wanted to go sometime just to see the people there, but not right away. If Mr. Arbothnot asked she would have been perfectly ready to go back working there, but she didn’t want to, at least not yet.

They’d hardly gotten settled in at the table with their menus in front of them when Sophia said, “Jane, Rick hasn’t told me much about your honeymoon, other than the fact that you had a good time. Do you think there’s something you ought to add to that?”

“Not really,” she grinned. “We had a good time, especially at Lunahilo Bay. You know, swimming, laying around on the beach, eating good food, honeymoon things.”

“Umm-hum,” Sophia nodded; Jane noticed that Rob had a big grin on his face. He understood what she and Rick were trying to do, which was to keep Sophia from prying too much. “Any problems?”

“Well, we got sunburned a little a couple of times, but we were able to keep it from being too bad. We mostly just hung out together. Some of it was with another couple who were also there on their honeymoon, and we got to be friends with them a little.”

“How’s the apartment working for you?” Rob asked, taking a little pity on Rick and Jane.

“Pretty well, although I can see it’s going to take a little getting used to. It’s an awful lot nicer than any of the other places I’ve lived.”

“Me, too,” Rick added. “Of course, having Jane there is what makes it especially nice.”

“Look, quit beating around the bush,” Sophia said. “What I want to know is how things are working with you.”

“So far, really good,” Rick told her. “It’s taking a little getting used to there, too, but so far I don’t have much room to complain. I can see Jane is trying to make things easy for me.”

“Jane, how about you?”

“I’m with Rick. So far, so good. Oh, I can see some possible problems laying out there, but we really haven’t had any so far.”

“What kind of problems do you see coming?”

“The ones you already know about,” Jane said. “I can see that Rick has had a couple of good days at work, but those kinds of days are pretty rare for him.”

“He would know more than I would. Rick, what do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “Most of what little I do at Comsector comes to me sideways, like this problem Junco had. I honestly think management wants me so bored that I’ll quit. That might even be a good idea if I had some idea of what else to do. It makes it hard on me and I can see that it’ll make things hard for Jane, as well, especially since she’s got the same problem.”

“Jane?”

“Just the nothing-to-do problem,” Jane replied. “Right now I don’t want to commit to doing something else, in case Rick decides he wants to do something else. If that happens, I want to be able to support him. But I’ll tell you what, I know what he’s feeling. That’s a very nice apartment you found for us, Sophia, but I’m still not used to it and I’m rattling around in there with nothing much to do.”

“You’ve gone through some pretty big changes,” Sophia counseled. “It’s going to take a while for things to get settled out for you. Don’t be in too big of a hurry.”

“That’s what I think,” Jane agreed.

“I’ve got to work out something sooner or later, and preferably sooner,” Rick said. “I can’t see sitting around the office mostly doing nothing for another five years. The hell of it is that I can’t do what I would like to do anyway, even if I were to quit there.”

“You don’t want to quit just yet anyway,” Rob pointed out. “I’ve been keeping an eye on this merger thing, and you need to sit tight at least until that gets settled. When the time comes to roll over your options you’re going to be sitting pretty if you stick it out.”

“From what you tell me, I’m sitting pretty right now.”

“Right, but stick it out and you’ll be looking a lot prettier,” Rob continued. “I mean, a lot prettier. But it’s not a done deal, not yet anyway, it’s still going to take a while to work out. Maybe a year, and it could be longer.”

“That’s well and good, especially since I don’t have anything else I can be doing.”

“Rick, I know it’s tough for you,” Sophia said. “I mean, I’ve sat out in the front office and seen how hard it’s been for you. That’s part of the reason I came up with this idea of looking for someone like Jane, to make thing a little easier for you, to help stick it out.”

“That part of it has worked out pretty well,” Rick agreed. “I mean, knowing you I was pretty sure you’d come up with a nice girl, but Jane is so much nicer than what I expected it’s almost unbelievable. I thought this idea of yours was crazy, Sophia, but it wasn’t. I mean, I never, ever figured I would wind up with a wife as nice and as pretty as she is.”

“You two really like each other, huh?”

“I think we do,” Jane smiled. “I’m with Rick. I thought this idea was crazy as hell, but so far it’s worked out quite well.”

“I’ll tell you what, that’s what I really wanted to hear,” Sophia admitted. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t so sure I wasn’t being a little over the top about it myself, so I’m glad it’s worked out so far. Look, I know you’re going to be facing problems, and of course I knew about Rick’s problem at work. Jane, at a minimum I think you’ve caused things to ease up a little for him there. About all I can say is that I’ll do what I can to help you out with this. There may not be much I can do, but I’ll help where I can. But I honestly don’t have much in the way of ideas about what Rick can do that I haven’t already talked to him about.”

“That’s good,” Jane agreed. “There aren’t many people I can talk to about this, especially as strange as the way this came about, so at least I’ll have you.”

“It’s good to see how well this is working,” Sophia continued. “Honestly, I was a little worried about it, but since things seem to be going well for now I can quit fretting over it. But I do have a question for both of you: have you told your parents yet?”

“No, I haven’t,” Rick said. “I’m not sure they’d believe that I ever could find a nice woman to get married to.”

“I haven’t told mine, either,” Jane admitted. “Like you said, this deal is a little strange and I’m not sure how I would explain it to them in the first place. I sure don’t want to do it in a letter or in a phone call. It really should be face to face.”

“That’s probably wise,” Sophia said. “Your parents aren’t far away, are they?”

“They’re not real close,” Jane shrugged. “It’s about four hundred miles, and we haven’t had a lot of contact the past couple years. I wanted to leave Hartford way behind me, and I pretty much have.”

“It’s been years since I’ve been to Wychbold,” Rick said. “I saw them before I went out to California, and I haven’t been back since. Sophia, you know how I am about driving, and I’m not much better about flying, although Jane has helped me with that. I almost didn’t mind the flights coming back from Hawaii.”

“Well, that’s progress,” Sophia smiled. “Seriously, you ought to think about getting in touch with them and telling them what you’ve done.”

“I guess I’m with Jane on that,” Rick said. “As much as I don’t want to go back to Wychbold, I think it would probably be best if I told them face to face, and with Jane alongside of me. There are a lot of people back there who probably wouldn’t believe me if I told them I was married, unless I had my wife with me.”

“Well, it’s something the two of you could do, I suppose,” Rob nodded. “It’s what, maybe two days drive to get back to Wychbold?”

“It must be something like that. I know it was a heck of a long drive to go from Wychbold out to Silicon Valley. It took me days and I was nervous as hell every inch of the way. Then, when I drove here from Sunnyvale, I swore I’d never drive a long distance like that by myself again.”

“You wouldn’t have to do it by yourself,” Sophia pointed out. “You’d have Jane with you. I don’t know where Hartford is in Nebraska, but it ought to be somewhere along the way to Wychbold. You could make both stops in one trip. But if you’re going to do it, you probably ought to think about doing it pretty soon, before both you and Jane get involved in things that would make it harder to get away.”

“Yeah, you might have something there,” Jane said. “Rick, you wouldn’t have any problem getting another week or so off, would you?”

“Not hardly,” he snorted. “I still have plenty of time coming, so that’s not a problem. Hell, I could probably get away with just taking off and not telling anyone. No one would likely even notice. Sophia might have to cover for me a little, but probably not.”

“One thing you might want to think about,” Rob grinned. “Is to get a nice car for the drive. I mean, nice enough to impress. Maybe something like a Corvette. You wouldn’t have to buy it. You could probably rent something like that, except that the rental for a Corvette for a week or ten days, and that many miles, would probably come to about what it would cost to buy it.”

“It would be nice to drive into Wychbold in something like a Cadillac or a Corvette with Jane at my side,” Rick replied, with a glint in his eye. “People would not believe it.”

“You’ll do it, then?”

“I think so, if it’s all right with Jane,” he said. “The only thing is that we probably ought to wait a week or two, just so those bozos at Comsector get used to seeing me around for a while.”

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