Sleep did not come for me that night as I concentrated on listening to Christina breathing as I ignored the pain. It was about an hour before the sunrise that I knew I needed to go back to the hospital and climbed out of bed to make the call. I could not make it to the phone and sat back down. Two things happened at once, Christina woke up and someone was trying the door handle. She wanted to know what was wrong and holding my side I force myself to get up without answering her and went to the door and standing to one side I waited. When I heard someone trying to pick the lock I yanked it open and grabbing the wrist I pulled the person inside and sent them flying to the ground before taking a cursory glance and shutting the door.
The hooded figure clamored to get up as he or she tried to get around the bed. My wife turned on the light and told me to stop. I did and had to sit down and between breaths asked if she was expecting her boyfriend. As she climbed out of bed with a sheet in front of her she went to the hooded figure and pulling the hood off she turned the person around, before me stood her son. He looked scared and I asked what he was doing. He told me he was told to bring by some clothes for mom. Christina told him it was okay, I saw the phone and made the call. In less than an hour I was back inside yet another hospital having my insides looked at yet again. When it was confirmed I had torn some of the muscle they wanted to do surgery yet one more time. I said only if they had to stop some internal bleeding. When they decided that the slight inflammation would subside and then after a conference call to the last doctor to work on me who apparently did a fine job fusing my bones back together I was released to the care of my wife who was still mad at my reaction to our son trying to break into our room. Since he had a key she claimed he was not breaking in. I told her knocking would have worked. It was the boy she named after me for reasons I did not know who said he was sorry for not knocking but since he was given a key he thought it was okay to come in. I apologized for my reactions.
It was while we were sitting by the pool of my wife's new lawyer that two questions were asked of me; he asked what it was like to be a spy and she asked if this was how life with me would always be. I told her son I was not a spy and to my wife I could not give an answer accept for I did not know. Down to one arm I admitted doing the normal things would be more difficult so I told my wife since she was the doctor I would defer to her advice on what I could and could not do. It was later with me full of pain blockers that we walked through the desert, the three of us. Living up in the mountains above the Great Salt lake Basin this kind of desert was unknown to Christopher but to me it was not much different than the Middle East. Albeit in the Middle East the havens for the rich and elite were separated from the wastelands by borders, languages and in some areas tribal groups, politics and religious movements not to mention the most basic economies. Christina asked if I was not a spy then what did I do; the truth was a big part of what I did besides working on engineering infrastructures both to be used by our own forces but also that which helped in rebuilding societies, I also had more than my share of information gathering and analysis on all matters of topics which included studying the social climates which had spawned the uprising of the current terrorists states and their threats to my home country. This I was able to do by going in as a consultant and I had been inside the homes of some of the most evil men in the world. More than once I had asked to be allowed to put an end to their miserable pathetic existences but the wheels of justice which hamper the growth of some of our leaderships pocketbooks either travel very slowly or not at all. Being a man who understood survival toward the end I did more jobs that were of active nature and had done my share of hunting and killing.
The reality was I had helped chase down some of those very men I had once offered to put out of the worlds misery. In these quests for which I had been retasked I did not neglect other areas of what I liked to study. Running a small Field Engineering Company under which other men were also paid had allowed me to put away finances for that day when either it was time for me to be put to pasture or if I did not return. Earlier I had wanted to get out but when Christina had that affair I had just stayed in and continued in my relationship with the monolithic bureaucracies that made up the protective elements of our nation. In the last years though my take on why things were happening had begun to change, no I was not one to put blame on my own country for someone else's decision to murder civilians in their acts of war upon us but at the same time I had been able to see the hidden relationships that existed which had helped fuel the fires of distress at home. As a student of history and religious anthropology I also considered those factors which were now being denied not by the organizations bent on destroying freedom but those who were supposed to be protecting freedom. I had made the decision to step out of the field and had used that as my catalyst but in reality I had been missing Christina who in those years after she graduated with her MD had built herself a nice career fixing people and had even gone on some of those mission trips using her expertise to help fix people in countries whose populations suffered more or less because of poor management which is me saying nicely that they had evil men who were more or less wolves guarding the hen house.
Because of my years of growing up in information gathering and analysis I always made it a habit to know who was where and what they were doing and over the years had put together my own files on those in our own country, I had never had to use it outwardly but from time to time I had sent on information which had helped those who like my wife's current lawyer used to do put some bad men away. I had no illusions that there were those who knew where that information came from. More than once over the years there were those who would have liked to see my status as a consultant pulled. In the end though particularly after the most devastating attacks on our home soil since World War II that became a non issue as some of those ageing cretins either removed themselves or were removed by acts of God or by their constituents. Because of those men and women, other men whose job it had actually been to keep America safe had been sent to pasture before their time and it was from this pool I had put together my team as did some of my competitors many of whose real purpose was to take as much loot as they could. At the moment I was out but not out as my company was still very much in the field engineering business one because I actually could get things built while other companies acted like they were working while adding up their bills which in turn showed their bottom lines going up which made the shareholders more money and it just so happened that some of the larger shareholders were those who were either making the laws or signing the contracts. More often than not we were called in after the failure of another contractor for which I charged a premium and passed on to the men who got the jobs done. It was overall a small operation more or less run out of the field with a small office back where it all started in Christina's and for a short time my home town in South Carolina.
Now as we walked and I looked back I realized i missed those early years of me starting my working life early with her dad to support her after we got pregnant. I had thought he would have blown his top back then when I told him after he and his wife had taken me in when I had no where else to go and treated me like a son that I had gotten his then seventeen year old daughter pregnant. The fact that I was only fourteen did not phase him one bit and he had treated me like a man and asked what my plans were and I told him I planned on taking care of my wife and our child. It was Christina's mom who had lost it and asked what I meant by my wife. She had turned red when I explained to her that according the the Good Book which she had pushed me to read it explained that when a man and a woman had sex they became one flesh and from my understanding that meant they were married. Her dad had asked exactly how long we had been becoming one flesh and looking at Christina I asked her when was it when she had decided to become a doctor. Smiling she said she had decided to play doctor a year after I moved into the room next to hers when I was eleven but when she found out when I was twelve how penises worked when mine stood up she had decided then to become a doctor and figured she needed to know what it felt like to have sex as she wanted to be a gynecologist and since Chris which is what I was called back then told her that he would not have sex with her unless they were married they had a wedding service out in the boat house with some friends and when I had filed taxes that year she told me to check the box saying we were married because her friend Amy Lynn's dad said in South Carolina that was all they needed to do to have the state recognize they were married.
I asked Christina if she remembered that day when we told her parents we were married and she smiled. Christopher told me grandma still would not talk about it. Smiling I told him I did not blame her as it was not every day a mother who had planned on this big wedding for her seventeen year old daughter after she had finished high school and some college found out her seventeen year old daughter had been married for two years and a half years. Christina said technically it was only two as we were not technically married until I filed my taxes so up to that point they had only been fornicating according to mom. The fact my wife was my senior was common knowledge in the family and caused more than her fare share of jokes which she was the brunt which started with her grandpa an old preacher. He had congratulated me when we finally did have that big reception and ceremony which coincided with her high school graduation when I asked why he was congratulating me for and he said for being stolen out of my cradle by the best looking old maid ever to walk the face of the earth. I had been fifteen then and working with her dad's contracting company and he seeing my knack for engineering let me take a look at plans while he and the engineers were looking at them. He had taught me the basics when he had told me since I was now responsible for his daughter I would need to work by day and study by night and I had to pay for my wife's education but first I had to build her a home. It was the same night i had broke the news to her parents that he had walked both of us out across his thousand acre hay ranch and asked where my wife wanted to put her house. She had turned around and led us back to that old three story barn where we both learned about sex and how to make babies and had spent so much time reading and studying everything we could about marriage, anatomy and child rearing. The smile on her face when she told her daddy that she wanted that to be her house made me gulp as having watched enough of her dads contracting jobs I knew it was easier to start from scratch. Her dad told me I had my work cut out for me and since I would no longer be going to school I could start drawing up plans in the morning.
I knew it had bothered her mom but when he asked as we were headed for bed why I was not going to sleep with my wife it had been weird. I could not help but look at Christina who must have known what I was thinking about as that quirky smile I had not seen in a long time was on her face. It was Christopher's next question that stopped Christina when he asked if she was so in love with me why did she cheat on my with his dad. Christina told him I was his dad and he shook his head and said he knew I was his dad on paper but everyone knew I was not really his dad. When she asked who he thought his dad was he stopped and asked if she really did not know the actor's name who owned the ranch farther up the road. I had never actually took the time to find out but it now made sense. My wife was a well respected doctor in the mountain communities and a part of the social scene and had been since we first moved up there so she could go through both her internship and her residency. Having installed the man's security system it was no wonder they had gotten to know each other. Apparently my face had gone serene which was a tell tale sign I was in working mode as Christina pinched me. Looking at Christopher I asked if he had his license yet and he said not yet as he only had his learner's permit. I told him that was good enough as I would be in the car with him. We were resting by the waterfall when I decided to take dip, and had to have Christina help me get my clothes off. I was under the falls when the tribal law enforcement came up and did not hear them but when I walked out they recognized me and asked how the water was. I smiled as Christina who looked scared helped me get dressed and told them it had been cleaned up. The senior of the rangers a man who had done his time for his country before returning to his home told me they had cleaned it up after closing it down and were now bringing in guided hikes as someone he once new suggested over some fire and a peace pipe. I apologized for the intrusion then and was told for me it was not a problem but since I was in town I should stop in and say hello. I nodded and said might just do that if the doctor forces me to remain here or was ordered to remain by the judge. Nodding he said he was not surprised it was me he was hearing stories about. I smiled and said blissfully he could remain ignorant. He nodded and said yes he could accept sometimes that world spilled over into his. He had offered a ride but I told him we were staying just down the road.
Christina asked if there was anyone in town I did not know and I nodded and said I had not yet my girlfriends' husbands, fiances or significant others. She almost choked and Christopher started laughing. She asked me if that was what I was planning and I played dumb and said I was not planning anything. When i saw the media trucks camped out in front of the estate of her lawyer I led them back to the little resort after stopping for an ice cream cone. Over dinner the chef another gentleman whom I had become friends with came out and asked who my date was. I introduced him to my future bride the lovely Dr. Christina and her son Christopher. The owner of the small resort overheard me and came over and smiled and said he was saddened to hear that; Christopher asked why and the owner said he had bet his wife that his soon to be father was gay. Christina almost lost it and in that almost choked on the glass of wine she was sipping on. His wife who had just walked in seeing Christina trying to regain her composure came over and asked her husband what he was doing now and he told her what I had just said and she told him yes he owed her on that bet but he must have heard me wrong as anyone could tell we were already married. When her husband asked how she pointed to our matching wedding bands. I had more often than not not worn it over the years as it could be a hazard if I was working on a construction site or was working under an alias. My guess is at some time I wore it when I had stayed here as when in the states or in a large European City it was the easiest way to tell the more forward women and men I was already spoken for. In Judeo-Christian cultures the wedding band could be the easiest way to discourage unwanted sexual encounters but I had also seen that over the years could also be the easiest way to pick up a date as it seemed to me both parties understood when you were partaking with someone else when you were married that there would be no strings attached emotionally speaking. I also know this is a lie unless you were one of the few who were blessed with the cures to have absolutely no soul or any sense of remorse.
The reality was when I was gathering information I used my understanding of people and their sexual misconducts to help loosen their tongues. Drunk men needing company and thinking I could make that happen liked to talk. Women on the other hand took a little longer but even though I had never cheated on my wife I had in the course of my career used a woman's need for stability in a relationship and the promise of romance to loosen their tongues over a bottle of wine. But then there were also those times when I was there to make sure photos of certain individuals in compromising situations were captured. Needing someone gone from their high and mighty position was easier done with visual evidence sent to the right persons in the right positions and if they happened to have a family regardless of how happily married they were having a spouse see there venerated spouse being a little too friendly with someone else say on the beach half naked or on a boat, usually brought about the appropriate reactions even if the marriage was more or less one of convenience or a business deal which for a lot of women I know it was exactly that and the first opportunity offered they cashed in. I was pragmatist when it came to modern marriage, for most in western society it was about opportunity and what would best boost how you were perceived, particularly as the income and education level went up. When I was home I could of cared less how I was perceived but I too had been affected by my spouses betrayal to the point when I was home over the years I refrained from any relations with her. I still was not sure why she remained married to me, as I know she did not actually need the money I had earned which was substantial but nowhere near what she made when it came down to it. I supposed as I sat there while she chatted with the owners of the resort that with the finances I had added to hers over the years without actually being an added drain it had allowed her some freedoms others did not have. The fact we bought the property before the small ski town really took off meant she was one of the matriarchs and when added to the fact she also had a second home in the one I had built her out of that barn on her parents property meant like so many of her mountain neighbors she was among the jet set. I realized at that moment I too was a jet setter of a different sort though many times those trips across the ocean were not in first class but business or aboard a large cavernous cargo plane painted a lovely shade of green.
I turned my thoughts to my the here and now as my wife and her son talked about life in the mountains and our soon to happen move back to her home. I had not thought about Christina wanting to go home as I had just thought about it. Still before she closed on that house I wanted to stop and visit the neighbor who shagged my wife and had probably never bothered to pay a single cent to support his son. I did not want a dime and knew my wife did not need it either so in my quickly put together plan I was just going to stop by and introduce him to his son. Before we left thought I would need to find out some financial details and if he did not want to fork over a hefty chunk of change into a trust fund for Christopher well I already knew I would take the next step and was not sure if Christina would ever talk to me again. So be it, that man made a decision and accepted what she offered and needed to pay for the child he helped bring into this world. Excusing myself I asked if I could borrow a computer and the phone. I was told I could use the office. I made one call to the office which was staffed twenty four hours a day and gave the name of the man I needed a file on and told the young woman who was on duty that night it was no rush and I would prefer it be kept quiet and as a low priority. I then checked my emails which had slowed since I had not been answering them. I forwarded them to an account on one of the servers the company owned which would then allow one of the office administrators to go through and prioritize them and if actions needed to happen pass on the information to someone who would deal with it. .
Tired of living behind the veil of silence and political correctness.
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