Jane took a deep breath and shut off the BMW in front of his parent’s house. Rick seemed confident this would go well, but still, she didn’t know what to expect. However, she wanted to make a good impression on his folks. It hadn’t mattered that much with hers, because she had known what to expect, and things had turned out like she’d figured they would. This, however, was new territory.

She grabbed her hairbrush and gave her hair a quick touch-up, then got out of the car and brushed her dress down – it tended to get a little wadded up in the seat of the car as much as they’d been in it. Then she walked around to the front of the car where Rick was waiting for her and took him by the hand. “Trying to make a point?” he grinned.

“Rick, I really do love you. Let’s show them that.”

“Jane, you’re incredible,” he smiled as they walked up the sidewalk. “In case you’re wondering, I love you, too.”

Jane could hear a television going as Rick rang the doorbell. In a moment a tallish, gray-haired man came to the door; he had a considerable family resemblance to Rick. “Hi, Dad,” Rick smiled.

“Rick! What are you doing here? We weren’t expecting you.”

“Well, we wanted to surprise you.”

“You sure managed that. Come on in, your mother just got home. She ought to be down in a minute.”

Rick stepped back and let Jane precede him into the room, which appeared to be comfortable and well-kept, not anywhere near as cluttered as the living room at her parents’ place had been a few days before. Rick’s father had hardly closed the door behind them when a lean, friendly looking woman with salt and pepper hair came into the room. “Rick?” she said, as if not quite able to believe her eyes. “Rick, is that really you?”

“Yes, it is, Mom,” he replied as she took him into her arms for a pretty serious hug.

“I can hardly believe it’s you. You look strong and healthy and well. I can’t believe I’ve ever seen you so tanned in your life. And is this Sophia you’ve brought with you?”

“No, Mom. Sophia is older than you are. This is my wife, Jane.”

“Your wife? When did this happen?”

“Not long ago, and it happened pretty quickly, but it’s worked out wonderfully.”

Rick’s mother stepped back and took a quick, appraising look at Jane, then gathered her in her arms. “Oh, Jane, I’m so happy to meet you! I was beginning to wonder if Rick would ever meet someone.”

“Things happened to work out,” Jane replied warmly, once again making a mental note to not get into the details of how she and Rick had actually gotten together – that would be a little hard to explain under these circumstances. Although things had worked out better than she could have expected so far, the whole thing still was a little unbelievable. But she added, “I think you have an awfully nice son.”

“I’ve often thought so. It’s just that there have been times it’s been hard to make other people believe it.”

“I suppose I ought to make some introductions,” Rick said. “Jane, this is my father Ray, and my mother, Edith.”

It took a while to get settled into chairs in the living room. Rick and Jane wound up sitting next to each other on the sofa, close together. While they didn’t hold hands all the time, Jane made a point of doing it a lot of the time, and noticed that Rick did, too.

“So,” Ray asked. “How long can you stay for?”

“I know this is a surprise,” Rick replied. “But we could stay for a couple of days, or more if we had to. We do have to get back to Boulder, and it’s a long drive. I let Jane do most of the driving. She’s a better driver than I am, but I don’t want to wear her out, either.”

“That’s probably wise,” Edith said. “Have you had supper yet?”

“No, we haven’t. We thought about stopping when we got off the Turnpike, but it was a little early.”

“That’s fine, I hadn’t started dinner yet. Would fried chicken be all right?”

“That would be fine,” Rick said. “Or, we could go out somewhere.”

“I’d just as soon not, unless we went into Bolivar or something,” Edith replied. “There’s no dinner place in this town that isn’t a bar, and I don’t like the idea of having to hang around a bar. I’d just as soon not go into Bolivar, either. I’ve been out of the house enough for one day, and besides, I’d rather talk to the two of you. I mean, you being married, it’s such a surprise. Jane, are you a computer nut like Rick, too?”

“I’m afraid not. I know how to use a computer a little, but that’s about it.”

“Mom, Jane is a graduate in art history. We’ve spent most of the last couple days at the Art Institute in Chicago, and she’s really impressed me with what she knows. I mean, I always thought they were a bunch of old paintings, and so what. She’s showed me a lot of the story behind them, and some of it is fascinating.”

“So you’re an artist, then?”

“No, I can barely draw my name,” Jane replied. “I envy those who have the talent, but I’m fascinated with the history and the stories the paintings tell.” That was stretching the blanket a good bit, she thought, but it was clear what Rick was trying to do – which was to impress his folks with her. She was willing to go along with that.

The next several hours were fun. Rick’s parents were nice – it was the difference of night and day between them and what had happened in Hartford. They seemed warm and personable. Jane made a point of not inquiring into what had happened with Rick in school, but there were hints here and there from his parents that they were aware it hadn’t been the happiest of times. Why they hadn’t been more supportive was something of a mystery to Jane, but then Rick had said it was to him, too.

The interesting thing was Rick himself. While he was still pretty shy in public or among strangers – he hadn’t said a total of a hundred words around her family in Hartford, for example – he was a lot more communicative around his family, much like he was with Rob and Sophia. Jane had been suspecting for some time that he was all right with people he knew, but getting him to that point with someone was obviously still a problem. That gave her some hope that with her involvement it might be something that could be overcome in the future. Even with his parents, Rick couldn’t be considered as openly talkative – Jane still had to do an awful lot of the talking for both of them, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been elsewhere.

It was still fairly early, around nine or nine-thirty, when Ray and Edith started yawning a bit, and were obviously tired. “Don’t get me wrong,” Ray said. “I’d love to sit up and talk with you all night, since we haven’t seen Rick in years, and Jane, you seem to be a fascinating young lady. But both Edith and I have to get up in the morning since we didn’t plan on taking off from work tomorrow, so we need to get to bed.”

“Yes,” Edith agreed. “I really hate to have to leave you two here on your own tomorrow, but I think you’ll be able to find something to do. Jane, in case I didn’t say it before, I think Rick got lucky with you. You seem to be a nice and intelligent young lady, and Rick seems to think the world of you. He deserves to have a good woman in his life, and I’m glad the two of you managed to find each other.”

“Well, I think a lot of him, too.”

“Mom, Dad,” Rick said. “We know you have to go in the morning, so we’ll let you get headed for bed. Don’t worry about getting us up in the morning.”

Rick and Jane weren’t very far behind them, and soon they were up in his old room, which he hadn’t used for years. “Jane,” he said softly while they were getting into bed. “This is even more unbelievable. If you had any idea of how many hours I lay awake in this bed, dreaming of having a friend at all, let alone a girlfriend or a wife . . . well, it seemed so impossible I hardly ever dreamed it could ever be true. And now, I’m here with you. Especially here, you are a dream come true.”

“I’m glad you think so. Rick, your folks seem to be nice people, and I’m impressed. I mean, my folks are all right most of the time, but having to deal with Grandma Mavis means that I’m always on edge with them. I don’t get that feeling here.”

“Believe it or not, my folks are not angels. Not that they’re bad, or anything, but in some ways they could have done a much better job of supporting me when I was a kid and going through all that crap I told you about. That led to something of a wall between us. If you weren’t here now things would have been a lot tenser, and I probably wouldn’t have been as open with them as I was. It has been years since we’ve talked about the kinds of things we discussed tonight.”

“You mean, because they were trying to be nice to me.”

“Yeah, that, too, but I they also want to impress you. You sure impressed them.”

“They seemed to like me.”

“I have no doubt that they did. But remember, they also never thought I could find a woman who could love me. In fact, I think they gave up on it years ago. But now we’ve proved them wrong and I think they’re trying to deal with it. We probably shouldn’t wear out our welcome, though, or they’ll start to get their feet back under them.”

“Then, Rick,” she grinned. “Maybe we ought to give them something else to think about.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Rick, you said you laid awake many nights dreaming of having a friend, or a girlfriend. Did you ever dream about making love to a girl right here in this bed?”

“Oh, hell yes. Thousands of times.”

“Well, you’ve got your wife in this bed right now, so I think you’d better make a few more dreams come true.”

“It might be a little noisy. Do you really want them to hear us?”

“I don’t care, but would you like them to hear us?”

“Jane, when you put it that way, I think we’d better give them something to listen to.”

It wasn’t quite the session they’d had the evening after they visited Hartford, but they made love more than once and weren’t exceptionally quiet about it. They finally fell asleep, closely cuddled up to each other.

The house was quiet and empty when they got up in the morning. They were slow getting up and getting dressed, but as they did Jane asked, “So do you have anything special you want to do today?”

“Not really,” Rick said. “I’m sorry it worked out that we had to visit on a week day, but I think it’ll be all right. It may even be better that way.”

“Do you want me to go downstairs and hunt around in the kitchen for something for breakfast, or would you like to go out somewhere?”

“You know, I think I’d just as soon go out. One of the things I want to do is show off that I can actually have a wife who’s as pretty and as nice as you are. It’s going to be hard to show you off if we just sit around the house all the time. Maybe going to breakfast would be a good way to get started on that. There are a couple of breakfast-lunch places in town, and one of them might be a good place to try.”

“All right, Rick,” she smiled. “But let’s get dressed up.”

“Why would you want to do something like that? These are sort of workingman’s places. We’d just be out of place.”

Jane shook her head. “You don’t get it, do you? We want to look out of place. That sends the message that you’ve moved way past this town.”

“Jane, I didn’t bring a suit and tie with me. I don’t even own a suit and tie.”

“Do the best you can,” she laughed, the vision coming to her a little more clearly now. “I guess we want to look like we’re slumming. I mean, we want to look like we’re supposed to be driving a BMW.”

“We are driving a BMW.”

“Right, and that’s why we’re supposed to look like it.”

“Jane, sometimes I think I have you figured out, and then you lose me again. All right, if that’s what you want.”

At that point Jane wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted either, but it seemed like a good idea to look prosperous, just to make the point that Rick had done better after he left town than he had while he was there. That was the truth of the matter, of course. Though she still didn’t fully comprehend the pain he had gone through here, it was clear that he would have been worse off to have stayed in Wychbold, even worse than it would have been if she’d stayed in Hartford.

She hadn’t been through downtown Wychbold before – they’d come into town from the wrong direction – and it seemed nice enough. Unlike Hartford, there were working businesses here and only a couple of empty storefronts. “What do people do in this town?” she asked.

“Oh, there are a couple of big factories and some smaller ones on the other side of town,” he explained. “Farming isn’t as big a deal as it used to be, I guess.”

From what they could see there were a couple of small restaurants on Main Street. “The place on the right looks like it would work,” she said. “The City Kitchen.”

“I don’t know. It’s been years since I’ve been downtown here. It used to be ‘Mom’s Diner,’ but it may have changed hands.”

“I can imagine why. There’s the old saying, ‘Never eat at a place called Mom’s.’”

“It wasn’t very good when I lived here, but maybe it’s gotten better. I suppose it can’t hurt to try it.”

“There’s a parking spot right there, so I suppose that’s as good a reason as any.”

The place was fairly large inside, not quite as big as the dining room at the Mountain Grove, but big enough. The tables were only about a quarter filled, so there was plenty of space to sit down; there was no hostess in sight, and Jane figured there had never been one.

They found a table near the door and sat down. Jane looked around, noticing that the walls were decorated with shelves of hundreds of little china figurines. “That’s different,” she commented.

“It didn’t have them before. I guess somebody must collect them.”

The waitress was around the other end of the room; Jane was looking at the figurines, and didn’t really notice her until Rick spoke up, a dismayed look on his face. “Oh, shit. That’s her. Let’s go.”

“Danielle?”

“Yeah. Christ, I don’t want to have to face her down.”

Jane glanced back at the waitress. She was, well, not fat, but well on the overweight side, but with a huge chest well out of proportion for her body; even at that distance Jane could see it was fake. Her hair was more than a little frowzy, and even as far away as she was Jane could see her makeup had been laid on with a trowel. “That’s her?” she frowned. “She looks worse off than I would be if I’d had to stay in Hartford. She doesn’t look like she’s riding quite as high on the hog as you said she was when you were in school.”

Rick glanced back in Danielle’s direction. “You know, you’re right,” he replied thoughtfully. “She always thought she had the world by the tail. It looks like the world has her by the tail instead. But still, I don’t want to put up with her.”

Jane glanced at the waitress again and then at Rick. “No, let’s stay. This is too good an opportunity to send the message that living well is the best revenge.”

“Jane?”

“I’ve got an idea. Just play along with me. Here she comes.”

“Jane, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Jane raised her voice enough to make it seem as if the two of them hadn’t been whispering. “Rick, honey,” she said clearly. “I’ve been thinking about it. What would you think if I was to sell the Ferrari?”

“The Ferrari?” he frowned, the confusion evident on his face.

“Yes, the Ferrari. I mean it’s a cool car and it cost half a million bucks. I love driving it but I can’t drive it much if it’s always in the shop. It means I’m stuck with the Lexus all the time, not that it’s a bad car, but it just doesn’t have the cachet of a Ferrari.”

“You’re probably right about that.” Jane thought it wasn’t the greatest line he could have come up with flat-footed, but it would do.

“That’s what I was thinking,” she replied, wondering a little herself where she was going with this. “That BMW Mike rented for us got me thinking. Granted, it doesn’t have the pizzazz of the Ferrari, but it doesn’t look as ostentatious. I guess I’m wondering if a Ferrari doesn’t make me look a little too nouveaux riche.”

“You might be right at that,” he replied. Jane thought he was getting the drift of what she was trying to do, and his next statement proved it. “You wouldn’t want to park a Ferrari in front of this place, for example. It’d look like a rose in a pile of manure.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. It’s not out of place in Aspen, but I guess I’m just as glad we didn’t bring it here.”

By now Danielle had made it to their table, carrying menus and glasses of water. “Can I get you . . . Rick! What are you doing here?”

“Just visiting the folks,” Rick said neutrally. Jane could see it was a struggle for him to say that much.

“And who’s this you have with you?”

“Oh, this is my wife, Jane.”

Jane could see the statement surprised Danielle. “Oh, uh, you’re married now?”

“Yes, we’ve been married for a while,” Jane butted in, giving Rick a big smile. “I don’t know what I’d do without such a nice guy. I was actually a little surprised that he really wanted to marry me. He has way more money than I have, and there are a lot of girls looking to marry that kind of cash.”

Rick really got the drift of that one, and swung for the fences. “That’s why I wanted to marry her,” he said. “I knew she wasn’t after my money.”

“Oh. Uh . . . you’re doing pretty well then?”

“Way better than pretty well,” Jane smiled. “Let’s just say neither of us has any reason to complain.”

Danielle seemed to be at a loss for words. She left the menus on the table and turned to go before she turned back and managed to say, “Can I get you some coffee?”

“That’s would be fine,” Jane grinned. “I think a venti, skinny, no whip, half caff, white chocolate mocha latte.”

“That sounds good,” Rick added, really following Jane’s lead now.

“Uh, we don’t have that cappuccino stuff,” Danielle said. “Just straight coffee.”

“Oh, I thought it was everywhere these days,” Jane replied, a disappointed tone in her voice. “Cream and sugar, then.”

“Just black for me, thanks,” Rick added.

“I’ll be back to get your order in a minute,” the waitress said, backing away from the table with her eyes wide.

When the waitress was far enough away that she wasn’t likely to hear him, Rick took Jane by the hand. “Jesus, Jane,” he whispered, shaking his head. “That’s hard to do with a straight face.”

“Keep a straight face and we’ll have some more fun,” she whispered back. “I’m glad you were looking at me, not at her, that’ll help send the message. But did you get a good look at her?”

“She looked like a mess with all that makeup.”

“It’s more than that. It looked to me like she has all that makeup on because someone worked her over pretty seriously. Maybe more than once.”

“Rodney Householder, I’ll bet. They were thick as thieves when I was in school, and he was always a world-class asshole.”

“Like deserves like, I guess,” she smiled, keeping her voice low. “You don’t feel sorry for her, then?”

“I suppose I should, but considering who she is, I don’t. If it was him, well, she deserves him.”

“We probably ought to talk about that, but not now. Let’s look at these menus, but when she comes back, keep following my lead.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I just hope I can keep from laughing out loud.”

“By the way, is that her real hair color?”

“Hell no, she was a brunette.”

They were silent for a couple of moments, supposedly studying the menus, while Jane was actually mentally writing and rehearsing some lines, and Rick was wondering what was going to happen next. As Jane noticed Danielle start back in their direction, she started to speak again.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “I’m going to give a pass on that Renoir. I don’t care how authentic the paperwork says it is, I think it’s a fake. That girl the agency sent over, well, I sure didn’t trust her. I don’t think she would have been able to tell a Renoir from a bag of rock salt. That blonde hair came right from a bottle, and those boobs of hers ought to have some chemical company’s logo tattooed on them. I mean, there was a lot more silicone there than there was girl, and she just looked like a cheap slut from the word go.”

The last part of that statement, of course, was loud enough that Danielle could hear it, although it was made to sound like it was directed at Rick.

“Well, you’d know more about it than I would, but you’re probably right.” Rick said. “Classic art is your field, not mine. I’ll stick to software, thanks.”

By then Danielle was up to the table, and proved that she’d heard at least part of Jane’s statement. “Are you some kind of artist?” she asked, a little red in the face.

“Oh, no,” Jane smiled. “I’m more of a collector. I buy art, and sometimes sell it. Of course, I won’t sell it unless I can make out pretty well on it. It’s really just a hobby, but I do all right with it.”

“That’s a little different,” Danielle commented.

“Well, it takes money to make money, and at least Daddy set me up pretty well,” Jane replied. “He thought for a while I was throwing his money away, but the balance sheets made him think differently. He’s not real happy about me being in trade, though, even though I tell him art is as much an investment as the stock market.”

Danielle looked at Jane, looked at Rick, and got a very sick look on her face. “Have you decided what you want to order?” she asked.

“I’m not very hungry,” Jane said. “I think just eggs and toast.”

“How would you like your eggs?”

“Two, en cocotte sounds good to me.”

“What? I never heard of that!”

“You haven’t? My, Rick, this is really provincial, isn’t it? How about shirred eggs then?”

“Shirred eggs? I never heard of those, either.”

“Are you sure? Everybody knows about shirred eggs. Your cook ought to know, even if you don’t. And I’ll have butterbrot, baguette if you have it, with ham slices and Roquefort.”

“Huh? I never heard of any of that stuff. Well, the ham I’ve heard of.”

Jane turned to Rick. “Boy, you were right, this place is way out in the sticks and barely out of the Stone Age, isn’t it? Aren’t you glad you got out of here?”

“Oh, I sure am,” he grinned. He apparently was really enjoying the tweaking Jane was giving to Danielle, who now looked thoroughly confused and flustered. “I’ve come to appreciate how civilized people live. I guess I’d forgotten how bad it is here, but it’s a good thing to forget.”

“People here sure don’t appreciate the finer things in life, do they? Rick, maybe we ought to go someplace else where we can get a decent breakfast.”

“Jane, I hate to tell you this, but we’re out here in the middle of nowhere. We’re just not going to find the kind of places we like, not for a long ways.”

“You’re probably right,” Jane sighed. “It would be a real bother to have to have Mike crank up the Learjet just so we can have a decent breakfast.”

Now Danielle was really amazed. “You have a Learjet?”

“It actually belongs to the company,” Jane shrugged. “But then, we own the company, so I guess you say we do.”

“Honey,” Rick spoke up. “We really shouldn’t keep Danielle waiting. She has other things to do. I think I remember how things are done here.”

“I guess,” Jane pouted. “Otherwise we’re going to be all day trying to get a simple breakfast.”

“All right, Danielle,” Rick smiled. “Scrambled eggs, Texas toast, and ham for both of us. I know that’s not what Jane and I are used to, but you ought to be able to handle that.”

“Thanks, Rick,” Jane smiled. “Sometimes I don’t know how I’d ever manage to get along without your common touch. I really love you, Rick, and I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

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