Redhead Meets Redneck: First Date (2 page)

Her turn came at the checkpoint. She laid her b
adge on top of her purse so the security officer would see her clearance level and credentials, and not be surprised when he looked inside her purse. The officer standing in front of her was new, and young. He seemed to be taking his time. When he picked up her badge, he held it close to his face and scrutinized it, then opened her small red purse. He glanced up at her, and then looked at the badge again. He rummaged through the rest of her purse, closed it, and smiled, “Have a nice weekend, Ms. Richardson.”

Once inside her red SLK350 Mercedes, she started the engine and began to pull out of her parking spot. A large yellow step van pulled in front of her and she had to slam on the brakes. She scolded herself for thinking about her date with William when she should
have been concentrating on her driving. She chuckled at the yellow truck with the large black letters on the side:
Flowers for Her.
If people only knew. The CIA had learned that the best way to hide something was to make it ugly, and put it out in the open where no one would be suspicious. The delivery truck came and went daily, delivering flowers to the CIA headquarters, but with the flowers were cards that had secret messages.  Some of the messages were simple code words that meant nothing to the casual observer, but to the handlers at the CIA, they were status reports about ongoing missions. After the handlers received the messages, they would send back flowers, or a fruit basket, with another secret message. Sometimes if a lot of information had to be sent, a microdot was glued onto the card where a period was needed. That could hold pages of information and could be read with a simple microscope by the handler or the spy. It was old technology, but it worked well.

Laura found it interesting that the flower delivery system ha
d to have an actual storefront that delivered flowers to normal people who didn’t work for the CIA. Otherwise people would catch on, and realize that the delivery business was a fake. So, the CIA established a store with employees on South Capitol Street in Washington D.C., and actually delivered flowers. But, they made sure that the service was pretty bad, so they wouldn’t get any return business, and customers would tell their friends that they shouldn’t use
Flowers For Her
because they never delivered on time, and occasionally delivered to the wrong place. This minimized their overhead, and they needed only a few people working at the storefront.

Laura gently eased her car out of the parking spot, drove down the busy driveway, past the guard shack, and turned left onto Route 123. She glanced at her watch; it was five-twenty. Good, she had forty minutes to make the thirty-minute drive.
She was anxious to make a good impression on William. On the other hand, did she really want to impress a redneck named Billy Bob
?

Laura saw the road
side sign that said Mama’s, and pulled her two-month-old Mercedes off the main road into the gravel-covered parking lot that was filled with pickup trucks, some old, some new, some rusty, some covered with mud, and some with antlers on the hoods, but all with gun racks filled with either shot guns or hunting rifles, or both.  She had to park at the far edge of the lot, but would have done so anyway since her car paint didn’t yet have any scratches.

Looking past the pickups, she studied the restauran
t, if you could call it that: a log cabin, albeit a very large one, surrounded with trees, with loud country music coming from the front door whenever someone exited.  She wondered if this was the right place.  The location matched the directions, the name was correct, but it didn’t look like a restaurant she would have picked for a first date, or a second, or a third.

S
he was a bit early, so she sat and watched the customers come and go, mostly guys with unkempt hair, dirty jeans, T-shirts, worn-dirty cowboy boots, and facial hair that hadn’t been shaved for anywhere from several days to several years. The occasional females wore denim skirts, no makeup except for gaudy lipstick, and well-worn flip-flops. What had she gotten herself into?  How could a clean-cut man in an Armani suit take her to a place like this?  She put her key in the ignition, and started the engine.  She turned her head to look out the rear window before backing up, and walking towards her was an Armani suit with a man in it.  He had a closely-trimmed goatee, and wore a white cowboy hat.  She shut off the engine as William walked to the driver’s side of her car and she rolled down her window.

“Hello, Laura
, it’s good to finally meet you.”

There was that sexy low south
ern voice again. “Hi William, or should I say Billy Bob.” 
Oops, it just slipped out. Maybe he likes the Billy Bob thing.
She opened the car door. As she turned sideways to step out, she noticed William staring at her snug gray sweater, short red skirt, and long slender legs.

“
Actually, I prefer William.  The problem is that I grew up in this area and I’ve always been Billy Bob to my friends. They’ll never change.

“I almost didn’t recognize you.” Laura studied the facial hair and hat, wondering is she liked them or not.”

“Oh, I’ve worn a cowboy hat since I was a little kid, but the goatee is new. Were the directions okay?”

“Yes, perfect. Do you come here often for dinner?”

“About once a week, but I have breakfast here every morning. Come on in, I want you to meet Mama.”

Walking across
the lot, Laura noticed how tall William was in real life. He filled the Armani so well, thick muscular neck, broad shoulders, firm chest and a flat stomach. He opened the squeaky front door and she stepped into a crowded dark smoky room that was illuminated mostly by stage lights at the far end, and the lights from pinball machines that lined the wall on the far right. Each table had a romantic candle, which she thought was an oxymoron. William stepped in front of her, and as he did he reached out and grasped her hand.  His hand was large, muscular, and calloused, but his touch was light as he guided her through the crowd.  She imagined those hands lightly caressing her skin. William occasionally had to elbow his way between people, but for the most part people saw his large frame coming and stepped out of the way. They would smile and say, “Hi, Billy Bob,” and then look her up and down. She could feel their continued stares as she passed them on their voyage through the sea of rednecks. Some of the guys asked him, “Who’s she?” or “Where’d she come from?” and several said, “You’d should keep this one.” 

Her eyes were starting to burn from the smoke as they reached the far end of the room. Willia
m poked his head in a stainless-metal swinging door that waitresses were passing through. “Hi, Momma.” The noise from the country and western band was so loud that she couldn’t hear the response. He continued the voyage a short distance to a door in the back of the restaurant.  Pushing it open, he gently guided Laura over a step onto a creaky wooden deck attached to the back of the restaurant. There he pulled out a worn wooden chair and she sat at a rickety wooden table for two. The back door slowly swung closed, and as it did, the country music faded into a muffled modulation.

He sat across from her
. “I know you weren’t expecting a place like this, but I had a reason for bringing you here.”

“So you could show me off to all your redneck hunting buddies?”

“Well, that was kind of fun. ” William smiled a boyish grin.

“Some o
f your buddies think that you should ‘Keep this one’.”

“Oh, that. Don’t listen to them. They said that on purpose so you
’d get mad at me. It was just a joke. They like to tease me. We’re a bunch of country boys, and that’s the way we joke with each other.”

“Okay,
so it was a joke. You said you had a reason for bringing me here?”

“Actually two reasons
. First, I wanted you to meet Mama.”

“The proprietor?”

“Yes.”

“And the second reason?”

William turned and looked out over a broad deep valley, lush with green trees blowing gently in the slight breeze. Laura saw a river winding its way through the bottom of the valley and its gurgling water percolated soothing sounds as it passed by.  She looked at the small homes that dotted the valley. Some were one-room log cabins, others were single-story ranchers, and in the far distance, a large mansion on a hilltop overlooked the whole valley. Behind it was a barn, and adjoining it was a carriage house. As she took in the details of the valley, she noticed a doe wandering with her fawns, and ducks meandering in the still parts of the river. A father and son were fly-fishing at the far end of the river.

“R
eason number two is . . . spectacular.”

“When weather permits, I always eat
out here.”

The country music surged as the back door opened.  A portly lady in her late fifties with a flowered dress, an apron, and hairnet walked to their table.

“Billy Bob, good to see you.” She leaned over and kissed him.

“Jimmy sends his love.”

Mama’s eyes glanced at Laura.

“Mama, this is Laura Richardson.”

“Hello
, Laura. I heard the rumors, and I’m glad to see they’re all true.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mama.”

“I just wanted to drop off a menu for you, Laura. Billy Bob has it memorized, so he doesn’t need one. I’ll be back in a few minutes to take your orders.”

The door closed slowly behind Mama.

“Rumors?”

“O
kay, so I told a few people that you were a looker.”

“Anything else?”

“I think I mentioned you were very intelligent.”

“Intelligent?”

“Yes, with all the database work you do, you must be smart. What did you do your thesis on?”

Laura sat a little straighter in her chair
. “I was fortunate to get into relational DBMS SQL software technology when it was in its early stages.”

“Do you incorporate any tuple calculus in your work?” William said.

“It was the core of my thesis.” Laura smiled. She enjoyed talking about her database job, but few people seemed interested, or understood. “So tell me how you got started in the construction business.”

“Not much to say. I came back after serving in the
Navy and needed a job, and so did a lot of my friends. It just seemed natural to start a business so we could have work, put food on the table, and maybe buy a house.”

Laura’s eyes drifted over the valley
. “Who owns that mansion on the top of the hill?”

“Some rich
bonehead.”

“Do you have something against being rich, Mr. Armani?”

“I have to wear Armani suits, for the job, that’s all.”

“So if you didn’t own the company, but were an employee instead, you
’d wear dirty jeans, wrinkled T-shirts, worn cowboy boots, and have facial hair like all your buddies who are playing pinball machines and listening to country music?”

William leaned back in his chair
. “My jeans and T-shirt would be cleaned and pressed, my boots shined, and I might have a day’s worth of stubble.”

Laura paused as she tried to imagine how a snug T-shirt would look on hi
s bulging arm and chest muscles. “So you don’t really care about Armani suits?”

“Not really
. Are you disappointed?”

Laura picked up her menu
. “Any suggestions?”

“I like the steak salad
. The chicken potpie is a favorite, and all of the seafood dishes are fresh from the Chesapeake.”

Mama came through the back door and stood looking at Laura
. “Are you ready to order?”

“
Caesar salad with shrimp, and a bottle of spring water.”

Mamma looked at William.

“Steak salad.”

“I’ll be back in a jiffy
.” Mama turned and went back inside.

“So how did you get in
to the data base business?”

“After college
, I was approached by a company that needed some work done that matched my skills. The rest is history.”

“They approached
you?”

“Yes.”

“How did they know you were looking for a job?”

“They asked Harvard who their valedictorian was.”

“Harvard?”

“Yes.”

“Valedictorian?”

“Yes.”

William raised an eyebrow.

“William, where did you go to school?”

“I went to the University of G.E.D.”

“You have a G.E.D.?”

“The Navy paid for it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even have that.”

“You built a successful business with a G.E.D.?”

“Well, since you put it that way, it’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

Laura wondered how a redneck could do what William did. On top of building a successful business, he could also talk to her about her SQL DBMS systems and tuple calculus. He
r other friends never talked to her about her work, and knew nothing about tuple calculus. Laura’s eyes drifted over the valley and lingered on the mansion on the top of the hill.