“The guys in my program, the other interns, were typical engineers. One was so shy he couldn’t even look at me. Another treated me like an affirmative action bimbo. The third was a conceited jerk. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t wanna sleep with him. Yeah, he was cute and all, but his personality…? God, no! I finally told him I wouldn’t sleep with him if he was the last guy on Earth, so he started telling people I was a dyke. I was furious.”
“I’d’ve killed him,” I said under my breath. “I still might.”
She snorted. “Thanks. I was tempted to say something to Rich.”
“Christy’s Rich? Seriously?”
“Yeah. I see him at the park sometimes. He’s a bully, but he’s always been nice to me. And he doesn’t put up with crap like that.”
“No kidding.”
Brooke lapsed into brooding silence. “It really sucks to be a woman with a brain,” she said at last. “It’s worse in the sciences and engineering. I’m smarter than most of the guys, but even my manager treated me like an anomaly. It’s ridiculous.”
“That sucks,” I agreed.
“At least you aren’t like that.”
“No.”
“Why? What makes you special?”
“My mother raised me right?” I thought about Susan and all the other women in my life, but Brooke wanted a simple answer.
Still, her engineer’s brain wouldn’t let it go. “It has to be more.”
“It probably has to do with sex.”
“What about it?”
“Maybe it’s ’cause I know I’m going to get laid.”
She snorted, part laugh, part agreement.
“That sounds like I take women for granted—”
She shook her head.
“—but you know what I mean. I don’t. At least, I try not to. But still…” I shrugged.
“You aren’t taking me for granted. You already know I’m going to spend the night in your bed.”
“Well, I hope you do.”
“I will.” She glanced at me sideways and then stared across the pool at the bungalows. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I need a good, hard fucking.”
I shot to my feet and started to call out to Christy.
“Not now!” Brooke laughed. “Sit down.”
I hesitated.
“Please? I… like talking to you.”
“Oh. Well. In that case…” I sank into the water and reclined on the steps again. “What should we talk about?”
“Anything but engineering.”
Christy swam over before I could reply.
“Hi,” she chirped. “What’s going on? Are you talking about me? Did he tell you when he’s going to ask? He thinks I don’t know, but I do.”
“Know what?” I said disingenuously.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said without looking at me. Then she accused Brooke, “I know you know more than you’re telling me.”
“I swear, Chris, I don’t know a thing.”
“He didn’t talk to you when he was in San Diego?”
I disappointed her when I didn’t react.
Brooke did too, although unintentionally. “You were in San Diego?” she said to me. “When?”
“For your graduation,” I lied smoothly. “You remember. We went to the beach.”
She suppressed a grin, and Christy glowered at both of us.
“I’m going to find out,” she said. “I know he’s planning something, and you’re in on it.”
“So what if I am?” Brooke shot back. “It’s supposed to be a surprise, Chris! But you always do this.”
“Do not.”
“What about Blake and the prom?”
“What about it?”
Brooke ignored her and continued, “And your surprise party, when you turned sixteen? I planned for three weeks—three weeks, Chris!—but you ruined it.”
“I didn’t ‘ruin’ it,” Christy said, sullen instead of defiant.
Brooke’s expression said otherwise.
“I said I was sorry,” Christy protested. “Besides, I can’t help it. I’m an overachiever. That includes figuring things out.”
“God help you,” Brooke said to me. And to Christy, “Just leave it alone. He’ll ask when he’s ready. And even if he does tell me, I still won’t tell you. It’s supposed to be a surprise. Do you even know what that means?”
“Yes. Only—”
“Then quit trying to figure it out! You don’t need to know everything before it happens!”
“I can’t help it. I get excited—”
“—and you forget,” Brooke finished. “Yeah, I know. But don’t do it this time, Chris. You finally found a guy who loves you, even with your psycho behavior.”
“It isn’t psycho,” Christy muttered.
“Yeah, Chris, it is. Now, chill out.”
“Fine.”
“I know what she needs,” I said into the silence.
“One of us should,” Brooke said.
“What?” Christy asked.
“A good, hard fucking.”
Her eyes flew wide, while Brooke’s pique became amusement.
“Matter o’ fact,” I added, “that’s what both of you need. For different reasons, but it doesn’t matter.”
“You can say that again,” Brooke laughed, and her blue eyes glinted in the light from the clubhouse.
“C’mon,” I said, “let’s get the whiskey. You can take turns doing blowjob shots until I’m ready to fuck you.”
“Yes, sir,” Christy said obediently.
I glanced at Brooke.
“What? Oh! Yes, sir.”
* * *
The weather had been relatively mild for the last part of July and the first of August. The temperatures had been in the low eighties, while the humidity had hovered under fifty percent most days. Summer wasn’t gone, but the days had been bearable, and the evenings had been downright pleasant. Then everything changed, almost overnight.
I went for a run on Monday morning and knew the day was going to be hot. The air felt like a sauna, and my skin was slick with sweat by the time I returned. The thermometer outside the clubhouse registered in the mid-eighties already, and the dew point had to be close. The mercury climbed several degrees before I even left to meet Granville. Mother Nature clearly had a score to settle with us poor humans.
The heat index had risen into the nineties by the time I returned and joined Trip in the main camp. He was already knocking down the next cabin in the row, and he waved from the backhoe’s cab. I waved in reply, donned my protective gear, and went to work.
The lifeless air was thick and oppressive, and a cloud of particles hovered like a miasma. I’d worn a T-shirt in deference to the heat, and my exposed skin collected a fuzz of dust, spores, and things I didn’t want to think about.
My jeans and work boots protected me from the waist down, but they trapped the heat and felt even heavier than usual. My hard hat and goggles were another source of frustration. I normally didn’t notice them after a few minutes, but the heat turned minor irritations into major distractions.
I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I tried everything, but nothing worked, so I changed tactics.
“The human body has an efficient cooling system,” my Environmental Control professor had once said. “However, it depends on the environment.”
“No fucking kidding,” I muttered, as if he could hear me.
“Your job as an architect,” he’d added, “is to control that environment to the greatest extent possible.”
I snorted derisively and cataloged the ways to do it.
Conduction cooling needed something to absorb the heat, a sink of some kind. Convection cooling needed moving air (or water) to transfer the heat. Evaporative cooling needed dry air to soak up excess moisture and the heat with it. Radiant cooling worked everywhere, even the vacuum of space, but it was inefficient and slow.
My current environment was hostile across the board. Everything I touched was at least as hot as I was, so conduction didn’t work in my favor. The air was completely still, which ruled out convection. And it was already saturated with moisture, so evaporation simply didn’t occur. Worse, I had no way to control any of it.