"You understand that means, essentially, every extremist reactionary group in the nation? In the nature of things, anti-Semitism is their common coinage even if most of them don't actually do much about it."
"Yes, I understand. Ask me if I care. We'll use the vicious murder of a nice old man by Huguenot fanatics to rid the Germanies of a plague that's been a problem for centuries in this universe and, in at least one other universe, produced a nightmare. Set up the meeting, Francisco."
Chapter 66
Grantville
Missy lay in Ron's arms, shuddering, her face down on his shoulder. "What in hell was that?"
Ron stroked her hair, then started rubbing the back of her neck. "You came. All the way. Not because we were doing it, or even anywhere close. Not even heavy petting. Not even really making out. Just lying here with all our clothes on the way we always do-well, mostly do, kissing and hugging, and wanting. Damn it, Missy. We're so ready for prime time that it isn't even funny any more."
She left her face right where it was and nodded.
He slipped his hand between her sweater and her blouse. His knee came up between her legs. Then he realized something.
"Where's the accessory? Want to get it?"
"It's prom night. I loaned it to Gertrude, just in case."
He thought about that a minute. "I take it that's not an open invitation to further advances. 'Greater love hath no woman' than to take a risk for the sake of her 'kid sister.' Because she loves her."
"What?"
"After I gave it to Gertrude, I went and saw Kortney. And she. She said to tell you."
Missy stopped.
"Tell me what, Miss Missy?"
She had her face buried all the way in his sweater. He pushed her chin up.
"That it's the biggest sponge she could squeeze in the way things are so you'll have to be careful not to poke it through the cervix because they're a pain to get out all in one piece and don't do any good anyhow unless they stay on this side. And I'm to come back and get a bigger one next week, if… if it turns out not to be a one time thing."
Her face went right back down into his sweater. What little skin he could see around the edges of her hair was beet red.
Any guy who would hang around a girl for six months waiting for her to agree to do it and only want to do it once would have to be some kind of pathological… Normal guys didn't wait that long in hopes of a one night stand. But he'd never exactly said anything about long-term. Long range. Whatever. They'd talked about everything else on earth, but when it came to sex, all they'd ever said was, "No way, not now." And it was Missy who kept saying that.
Even here in Grantville, right in the high school, there had been a couple of guys who did whatever it took to score and then dropped the girl the minute she was on their card.
There was something skeptical that was part of the basic Missy. She never made assumptions. She didn't take anything for granted. "No risks you don't want" from him didn't quite cover the case of risks she did want.
The day her mind decided to agree with her instincts, she had gone to see Kortney, who could and did ask the most embarrassing questions imaginable. Then she had come out to Lothlorien this evening and walked right into his arms.
"You'd better plan on going back. And getting a large-sized bottle of that solution they dunk the sponges in."
He stroked her spine for a while. The little bit of her face he could see was returning to its usual color. While he thought. Once she decided, she had walked right into his arms. Without a word of commitment from him. Even though the last thing in the world she wanted to do was have a baby. Even though she knew how iffy anything Kortney could give her was. Even though she had thought about the possibility that it might be a "one time thing" for him.
"Miss Jenkins, would you do me the honor of bestowing your hand upon me in matrimony? And all that?" The fancy words were good. If she wasn't at all interested, they could pretend it had been another bit of joking and go on from there.
"But…"
Joking wasn't good enough. "I mean it, Missy. Let's clear things up before we get ourselves into a situation where we feel like we have to, and it comes up as a grudge in every fight we have for the next fifty years."
"I want to be a librarian, not…"
"Be one."
"If we get married. If we don't have to stop and think about what we're doing in advance every single time, because it will be so convenient…"
He tilted her chin up again. "Is your Aunt Clara going to be a Little Miss Perfect Housewife?"
"No. She's going back to work after six weeks off."
"Think about it. Why? How?"
"Why? Because she wants to. How? Because with Uncle Wes and her both working for the consular service, she can afford a nursery maid to do the scut stuff and handle the baby while she has meetings and things at work. And another maid to keep the house, so supper's ready when they get back home. And they send the laundry and stuff to MaidenFresh." She pulled herself up, sat back, and grinned. "Clara really isn't into housework. She knows how to do it, cook and bake and stuff, and she's run a house before, but she would a lot rather be doing something else."
"So pull your mind set out of up-time middle class. Dad used to talk about this, sometimes. What happened in the nineteenth century was that there was this push on for everyone to follow bourgeois values. But most families didn't have the money to hire the staff that it required back then when modern appliances weren't around, so for most families, the mom turned into the maid and the nursemaid, too. Doing scut work and changing diapers all day and then expected to dress nice and make like the lady of the house in the evening so her husband wouldn't notice that her hands were all rough and chapped from scouring pots."
"I never thought of it that way."
"Bourgeois hypocrisy, Dad used to call it. 'Boor-jwah!' But there's no reason for you to, Missy, any more than Clara does. Get real. As weird as it still seems to me-my Dad, too, even more-the fact remains that in the here-and-now the once scruffy and disreputable hippie Stones are fast becoming one of the richest families in Europe. Outside of royalty, for sure. If there's any couple our age in Grantville who'll be able to afford all the household help they'll ever need, it's us. And we don't need to do the upstairs/downstairs thing, either. Just hire employees at home, like we hire the people at the plant."
He abandoned the fancy words. "Marry me, Melissa Marie Jenkins. No matter how unlikely it seems, we'll make a good team."
Missy wrapped her arms around her knees and looked down at him. "We'll make a good team" wasn't exactly, "You are the light of my heart and the love of my life," she thought. But she wasn't going to get flowery declarations from Ron. No lacy valentines. No poems. Probably not chocolates, either. If there ever were sweet, smooth milk chocolates again. No bouquets on anniversaries. No… flimflam, except as an occasional joke. No "I adore you and will until my last breath."
But she'd never said those things to him, either. He wouldn't know what to do with them if she did.
"Mom and Dad separated for a couple of years, did you know? She caught him running around with another woman. Anne was already away at nursing school. Chip lived with Grandma Jenkins and I stayed with Mom. Later on, Mom forgave him and took him back."
Ron shook his head. "I guess we weren't that close to most of the people in Grantville back then. I never heard about that."
"They didn't explain any of it to me when it was going on. I found out the reason a couple of years after they got back together. At a picnic out at Pop's. I was being a 'little pitcher with big ears,' eavesdropping on Nani while she sniped at Gran about Dad."
He looked up. Missy's cheek had marks from the texture of his sweater. Her gray eyes were bleak. She had pulled her hair back that morning, fastening it in a twist. She was magnificent. He wondered how she had ever come close to disguising herself as a cheerleading ditz. Maybe it had been the uniform.