CLOUD DRAGON

ONE

Latch On, Latch Off

Each bud that opens embraces becoming as if it has never happened before. —Shellen Lubin

A

bbey London struggled, releasing a heartfelt sigh. “Come on now, if I’m going to blatantly open my blouse and offer you this beauteous, bountiful breast, you’d better be gentle with me. It’s only fair.”

Jake Harper looked at the woman seated on the couch across from him, the woman with hair of weathered copper and freckles dusting either side of her nose of nearly the same hue, and thought her bosom was indeed beautiful. And bountiful. So, he said it out loud, calmly but in all seriousness, with a little smile at the corners of his mouth.

Abbey looked up from struggling to get baby Hope to latch on and frowned at him momentarily. “She bites sometimes, you know. And it hurts, it does, even though she doesn’t really have teeth yet. But when she closes her eyes in concentration and suckles hard, it actually feels good, sometimes all the way down to my . . . toes,” she finished with almost a whisper, looking down at her infant, who was no longer a newborn, and well past her first month.

He could see the dusty dark under her eyes and knew how tired Abbey was, because he was almost as exhausted. His blondish hair was even more tousled than usual, and he’d showered but not shaved after his late afternoon run the day before, since this day was a Saturday, the second such occasion in April. But Hopie was still waking up every couple of hours all night long. Life balanced out though, as the tulips were just coming into full blossom, and the day was sunny, just a few cumulus clouds lazily floating by on their backs, not even paddling. And it was a weekend, and fortunately they had no guests at Dragonfly Inn today, the two-story, well-maintained craftsman bungalow that Abbey’s parents had converted into an Inn.

The weather stood in stark contrast to what had happened ten days before. The rains had been torrential, almost tropical, which was an apt description since the culprit was Hurricane Jace, winding from Category 3 on the Saffir–Simpson scale while in the Caribbean down to Category 1 as it hit the New Jersey coast, supercharged by the additional moisture content of the warming atmosphere from the weirding climate. The Potomac River rose but with no significant flooding of the capital. New York City, on the other hand, took the brunt of the blow, with videos of water cascading down stairs leading to the subways, high water in the Brooklyn industrial area of Gowanus, and city buses with “cross sea” waves on the floor inside, sloshing not from the wind but rather the starts, stops, and turns taken by the driver.

Abbey’s uneventful delivery early in March capped what had been a rather more bloodcurdling than uncomplicated first-time pregnancy. Abbey, a doctor specializing in infectious diseases, at the beginning of January had been exposed by contaminated needlestick to the virus of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, never previously seen in the Western Hemisphere. Fortunately, the several antibody cocktails she’d received were credited with possibly having warded off infection, though she’d been protectively quarantined in George Washington University Medical Center for more than a week, and monitored for several months thereafter. The potential for infection during pregnancy had been so grave she was initially under the care of a perinatologist in the hospital, then her group’s obstetrician post-discharge, and ultimately by a young certified nurse-midwife when Abbey finally went into labor.

But it could be said in their circumstance that all’s well that ends well, as the delivery was accomplished by Charly—short for Charlene—in the hospital where Abbey had finished her specialty training just the year before, and Jake had concurrently joined the faculty in the university’s engineering department.

She looked down at their daughter, her face softening. “When she looks up at me and starts to smile, I gotta be careful she doesn’t slip off my nipple.” Abbey tossed her head back and rolled her neck, feeling it between her shoulder blades, as Hopie was just beginning to get heavy to pick up and cart around. Now the little imp was starting to slow down, pausing between sucks, breathing contentedly, then pulling off to yawn.

“Let me,” said Jake, as he stood up to come over to pick up his daughter, first arranging a spit-up cloth on his left shoulder, then resting her sleepy head against his, alternately patting her back and rubbing it until suddenly she brought up a big burp. “Would you listen to that? She gets this belch from me, you know.” He kept up his pat-and-rub routine until she let out another lesser illustration.

“Why don’t you check her diaper and change as needed, then put her down for a nap,” said Abbey. “In the crib in the nursery, not the bassinet next to our bed. If she falls asleep, then I should lie down, ’cause she’s gettin’ me up so many times I lose track. You’ll be awake, because I know you need to work on a seminar. And I’m on call for my partner Dan all Sunday, so I need to pump some more breast milk.” She sighed. “Just not . . . right now.”

“You know how delighted Anne was to become a grandmother for the first time,” Jake reminded her, “and Colby was great the way he helped out opening up that storeroom for the nursery. It’s just too bad we ran out of time to finish painting it, life just got too busy.” He stopped. “I really like your dad, you know, I feel like I got to know them both a lot better. That fancy baby carriage was an outstanding gift.” He shifted Hope down to his left arm, ready to head to the nursery.

“And I’m glad Dad had enough seniority in the State Department,” Abbey said, as she put her nursing bra and blouse back together. “Not to mention vacation time saved up by both of them, so they were able to insist on a full two-week furlough before returning to Abu Dhabi.” She gazed at the two of them, father and daughter, savoring and saving the picture in her mind. “So, get that kid into the nursery, love. And don’t forget to put her on her back to sleep, because of SIDS risk,” she said, starting to yawn herself.

I know it’s important, but she must have told me that half a dozen times.

Abby continued. “And Rachel and Brian are going to drop off dinner again, I’ll bet with some of his trademark loaves of bread. Good thing your friend’s quite the baker.”

***

When he heard the soft knock at the front door, Jake walked swiftly but quietly from his office in back of the Inn down the hallway to the entrance set next to the boot room on the right.

Opening the door, he motioned for them to be quiet. “Hey, guys, they’re both asleep, so come on into the kitchen.”

Both Brian and Rachel were carrying baskets. She was wearing a broad-brimmed hat to corral in her dark chocolate curls, a light jacket, no jewelry, no makeup. She gave Jake a quick hug, then tiptoed into the first door on her right, and put her basket on the small kitchen table, the food covered with a monogrammed dish towel.

Brian, only slightly the taller of the two, shook Jake’s hand firmly. Bri had on his usual jeans with a wide belt set off with a brass dragon belt buckle. His ponytail was longer than Rachel’s hair, his sweatshirt not exactly slovenly but clearly not new. Brown eyes, darker hair, Brian was one year behind Jake but a graduate student in mechanical engineering instead of the electrical flavor. He was going to finish up in June. He was not planning a teaching career but was rather already being recruited by several firms in the area. Opening his hamper, he pulled out two loaves of sourdough and placed them on the kitchen island.

Jake gave a low whistle of admiration for their offerings as he looked inside Rachel’s basket. “This is so great for the two of you to do this, guys, but we’ve been home for a month and you know I have a few culinary skills, right?” They sat down, Rachel and Brian at the table, Jake on a stool at the island immediately adjacent.

“How’re they doin’?” Rachel whispered, as she leaned toward Jake.

“Hope is fine but we’re both tired. Not like back when Abbey was in the hospital, more like just new parents trying to get used to—everything,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

Brian harrumphed, saying, “Yeah, but Jake, you’re back to teaching full-time, Abbey’s sliding into more hours besides just weekends, and now Dragonfly Inn is starting to accept some paying guests again? Are you crazy or what?”

Jake shook his head more firmly. The show must go on. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. We’re mainly just accepting reservations from people who’ve been here before, a few of whom change their mind when they find out they might hear a baby crying during the night. And we have diaper service for at least the first three months, courtesy of Colby and Anne. And some of the lectures I’m giving are just updated from what I gave back when I was a teaching assistant.” He stood up to start slicing some of the bread Brian had brought, setting out plates and putting the toaster to work.

“I will confess,” Jake continued, “that Abbey has taken on another responsibility after achieving such a high profile from her work with the friggin’ Crimean-Congo trainwreck. The Center for Disease Control is asking her to consult and coordinate with their center for something like Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. That’s right in her bailiwick, because as you know she has this irresistible attraction to any infection transmitted by mosquitoes or ticks. She tells me this center is part of the international outreach by the CDC to surveille and identify new pathogens, whether naturally sourced, from laboratory accident, or from biowarfare work by bad actors. Kind of like that old movie, Contagion, with Dustin Hoffman and . . . um, and Rene Russo.”

“What was that, back in the 1990s?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah, that was it,” Brian agreed, after a moment’s thought.

The two of them knew where the butter and jellies were in the fridge and pitched in to help.

“I’ll get the coffee going,” Jake said, setting out mugs and plates on the two sides of the table adjacent to the wall and on the island for himself. “And I know you guys heard we’re going to be interviewing a possible nanny in a couple of days. Her name’s Mina, she’s a friend of Charly’s, she’s from Vermont, and she’s had some formal training.”

Brian buttered up some toast for the three of them.

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “Would she stay in one of the rooms upstairs?” But Jake shook his head, adding his favorite apple jelly to his toast and taking a big bite.

“No,” he said, “she’d be a live-out, not live-in nanny. I’d heard one of our neighbors on the other side of the block had put up a sign about a room for rent, so I walked around to talk to the Petersons last month. Nice folks, they share a back alley with us, so a nanny could come from their backyard gate through our gate, then a straight shot into the house.”

He saw Rachel and Brian were devouring their toast as well, though both had opted for grape jelly.

Brian stretched his arms up with a groan probably from a bike workout, then asked, “What kind of hours and what kind of pay are you offering a person like this?”

“We’re thinking of her starting at seven or eight in the morning,” Jake said. “Monday to Friday, finishing up when one of us gets home. And I do a fair amount of work on my computer here in the back office, but I could let her take care of the kid if I need to keep working here, to maintain her hours and my productivity. Mina’s references sound great so far, but we need to call a few more people before we finally meet her in person.” He tapped his fingers on the table, a habit from the old days.

“We’re checking to see what typical pay scales are for Virginia,” Jake said, continuing, “and Clarendon in particular. With a variable schedule, pay should be on the order of seventeen or eighteen bucks an hour from what we’ve found out so far. It’s not physically challenging, and it’s only one kid, but obviously this may entail some negotiation.

“One more bit of news, guys,” Jake said. “Apparently the Nuclear Regulatory Commission got word of the help I was in locating that Stenger guy last year, you remember, the one who carried out a successful cyberattack against the Peach Bottom nuclear plant.”

“Have you heard how long those two reactors are going to be out of commission?” Brian asked, but Jake shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he replied, “but I suspect it will be many, many months. My help was almost negligible, if you ask me. Just an email and follow up to a conversation I had with one of our guests at the Inn, where we had talked about FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The long and the short of it is that since most of my research deals with the electric grid, I’ve been asked to consult about susceptibility of the grid to attack, either electronically or by physical disruption. It means of course, that I’ll be doing a ton of extra reading. I might even incorporate some of this into my classes. Nothing classified of course, although they tell me I will need to apply for some sort of low-level security clearance.”

He shook his head again.

“That sounds downright fascinating, Jake,” Rachel said, smiling.

Brian stood up, polished off his last bite, washed his hands at the sink, and said, “Well, buddy, Rach and I have some shopping to do at the food co-op, and after that it’s shaping up to be a great day to get some biking in, at least an easy twenty-five miles or so.”

Rachel followed suit, remembered to grab both baskets, gave Jake another quick hug, and said, “Take care of that kiddo. And remember Bri and I get to be honorary uncle and aunt. Or maybe godfather and godmother.”

Brian couldn’t resist, as usual. “I’ve seen those movies, and I really think I could be a godfather.”

Ignoring that, aside from rolling his eyes, Jake said to Rachel, “Either way sounds good to me.” He walked out the front door with them.

For a moment all three stood still and admired the tulips, then the two of them were off on their quest.

TWO

Shootin’ the Breeze

Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything. —Wyatt Earp

Always drink your whiskey with your gun hand, to show your friendly intentions.
—A plainsman

M

att looked over at Buck to chastise him in all good humor. “Come on, you know ya gotta set up the beer cans, stop bitching about it.” He held some authority here, having been the only one of the three with a record of actual military service, on the ground in Kabul in May of 2011 when Osama bin Laden was taken out in Pakistan. Not that he had anything to do with the operation; he served protection for the US embassy in Afghanistan, never left the city. Rangy and muscular, with black hair and a perpetual five-o’clock shadow, he stood there, hard olive eyes focused on Buck, who, grumbling, refused to look up at him.

Matt rarely took his trucker cap off, though he’d turn it around when he bellied up to the Pearl Handle Bar in Lockhart in southern Texas. He was the only one who wore cowboy boots, even when he engaged in local delivery for Longhorn Propane. His jeans were held up by an old leather belt with a rodeo buckle, which he had won back in high school years before.

Squinting, Buck looked around at the sky and spit out some tobacco juice. “Hell, Matt, why do I have to be first every time?”

But it was his brother Elliot who replied. “Because you drink more beer than the two of us put together, you’re the youngest asshole here, and I’m the one ya call to get bailed out of jail on Saturday nights, remember?” Taller and stockier than his brother, he was generally willing to follow Matt’s lead. He had eyes the color of a barber’s strop, and old leather hiking boots of the same worn color. His work as an electrician took him to Austin, only thirty miles away from the small town of Lockhart, not considered much of a commute around these parts. “And if you were smart enough to not keep all those empty bottles and cans in your truck, then maybe that sheriff’s deputy would be more likely to let you go with a warning.”