Chapter 21
It. Was. Gorgeous.
The Cessna 400 was brand new, right off the assembly line, and had only been flown once outside of whatever tests the manufacturer did, and that was to fly it from Richmond, Virginia, where it was bought, to Austin. It was very sleek, with sloping, graceful lines, low wings, and fixed gear in flared housings. It was painted the same colors as the logo of Vulpan Steel, red white and blue, with a white overcarriage and a blue belly with two horizontal red stripes along the fuselage broken by the registration number, running just under the cockpit and back along the centerline of the plane, with the plane's registration letters and numbers in red.
The inside was even more amazing. It was like a luxury car inside, filled with leather and sleek glass and rich wood. The control sticks were offset at an angle off the sides of the cockpit, not in the center or between the pilot's knees, and the seats were beige and covered in leather, split down the back to accommodate tails. The instrument panel was almost all glass, two panels holding a Garmin navigation system and electronic instruments, with a center console holding the radio, throttle, and some of the controls for the Garmin and other systems. It was all top of the line; new… it even smelled new. The doors were gull wing, opening to give them access to a surprisingly roomy cockpit reached by stepping up onto the bases of the wings.
Jessie gaped inside the cockpit from the copilot's side, almost afraid to get in, as Kit confidently climbed into the plane and opened the glove compartment, which for the plane was on the side of the center console facing the pilot. He noticed the sleeves in the side for maps or magazines, and all the little niceties… though it had no sun visor. The cockpit glass was rounded and high on the front, giving one a fantastic overhead view, but it had no sun visor. Sunglasses would be a must in this plane.
"Can… can I get in?" she asked.
Kit laughed. "Don't be silly, pretty kitty," he teased. "Climb on in, have a seat."
"But there are controls up here," she protested, pointing at the control stick jutting from the rest on the side of the cockpit.
"Just ignore it, love," he told her as he found the paperwork the courier mentioned. The plane was already registered in his name, which meant that Kit could fly it that day if he wanted. He rifled through the legal papers to make sure everything was in order, then he pulled out the operator's manual. He didn't really need it, since he'd already downloaded absolutely everything he could find on the Cessna 400 yesterday, which was printed out and in a big binder that was still in the truck, but the manual matched up to everything he'd read online. And what he'd read told him that he'd need some time to adjust to this plane. He'd been trained in two planes, a single engine Cessna 172 and a twin engine 341, and had flown a Cirrus a few times, but those weren't even half as luxurious as this plane, though they did share the Garmin G1000 navigation system. It had just everything. TKS anti-ice system, a rarity in a single engine plane, a Mode S Transponder, a 4.2 G rating, which would let the plane do some pretty hard flying, HVAC climate control, speed brakes, TCAS collision avoidance system, multichannel transceiver with push to talk switch right on the joystick, the plane had almost every system someone would find in a more complex plane like a twin engine except retractable landing gear. The Garmin G1000 system was just godly, incorporating electronic flight instruments, real-time traffic locations on the map taken from transponder data received from beacons, autopilot, computer-assisted navigation, GPS, plane functions, timers, flight plan generators, fuel mix calculations, and since Vil had bought a totally decked out plane, it had XM satellite radio and real-time weather radar imagery, and was also outfitted with a Blue Sky satellite internet system and a wireless router, allowing them to use their laptops in the plane to surf the internet. From what he read, it was one of the fastest piston engine planes in production, since Vil bought him the turbocharged variant. It was capable of 254 knots, which was around 300 miles an hour, but that was at high altitude and burning fuel like a son of a bitch. Its load rating wasn't the greatest in the world; if he carried four people and luggage, he couldn't completely fill his gas tanks and still get the plane off the ground, it would be overloaded. But, given the plane had a range of over a thousand miles on a full tank, he could easily fill to load rating and just land more often for refueling stops. With just him and Jessie and modest luggage, the plane could fly from Austin to Cincinnati in one leg without refueling, as he could completely fill their tanks. According to the Garmin's navigational database, it was 812 nautical miles from Georgetown to Cincinnati, which was nearly 300 nautical miles within the maximum range of the plane with full tanks. At a listed cruising speed of 174 knots, they could make it in about six hours, including takeoff and landing delays. Closer to seven hours if he factored in driving to the airport, then driving from the airport in Cincinnati to her parents' house.
"Wow, it's almost like being in a car," Jessie said, keeping her paws in her lap, fearful to touch anything.
"It's just like driving after you get used to it," Kit chuckled. "I haven't flown for like eight months. I hope I'm not rusty."
"Kit!" she gasped, a little fearfully.
He put his paw on her shoulder. "I was joking, pretty kitty," he said, gently. "I'm sorry if I scared you. I didn't realize the idea of flying in a plane made you nervous."
"It does, a little. I've never been in a plane like this before," she told him.
"Well, love, they're just as safe as an airline. After all, how often do you hear of planes crashing?"
"Not often."
"Now think of how many planes are in the air right now," he said, motioning at the runway of the small municipal airport, where two personal planes were waiting as a third took off.
"I see what you mean. They're really safe, I guess."
"Safer than driving, because pilots take flying much more seriously than most furs take driving."
"So, when can we go to see my folks? I'd love to drop in on them!"
Kit chuckled. "Maybe next week," he told her. "We'll see how I feel about it after I have some time learning this plane's systems. I have a lot to study here, and I'm one of those pilots who takes this seriously. I need to get comfortable with this cockpit, and learn how the plane's unique systems and autopilot work. I've never had that in a plane before, at least not a good one. The 341 I trained in during flight school had autopilot, but it was dumb as a box of rocks."
"What were the planes you used to fly like?"
"Well, when I was in flight school, they were pretty nice," he told her. "Cessna one seventy-twos with Garmin navigation, so they were pretty nice to fly, and Cessna three forty-one twin engines, so we could learn complex planes and older navigation systems that weren't as modern as the Garmin. After I got my license, though, all the planes I flew were old," he chuckled. "I rented planes to keep logging hours after I got my license, but not much else, and old planes are cheap to rent. I tell you, those old planes made me appreciate the Garmin system in the Cessnas."
"I've always wondered about that. How did you afford it? I mean, I heard that it's really expensive to get a pilot's license."
"Well, my scholarship and grants covered most of my flight school, believe it or not," he told her as he settled into the pilot's seat. "Since I was in ROTC and I wanted to fly jets after I graduated and went into the Air Force. Vil helped me with the rest of it. After the accident, I actually earned money with my license," he laughed. "I was paid by my dorm buddies to fly us all to Nantucket one weekend. And it was even legal."
"Legal?"
"Love, there are different types of licenses," he told her, "just like with driving. I have a commercial pilot's license, because it's the baseline for flight school in the Air Force. If you have a commercial license or better, they give your application for flight school much more weight. I spent over a year in a flight school near campus getting a commercial license, and it wasn't cheap," he grunted. "Anyway, there's a junior license, which is like a learner's permit, then there's a standard pilot's license, then a commercial license, then there's a flight instructor's license, and finally an air transport license, which airline pilots have to have. Only a commercial pilot or better is allowed to earn money flying a plane," he explained. "Commercial pilots are rated for instrument flying, which is huge, and we're trained to deal with many more emergency situations and to deal with air traffic controllers. Standard pilot licenses run on what's called visual flight rules, where commercial and above are allowed to run on instrument flight rules. Right now, if there was a cloud deck above us, those planes over there waiting to take off would have to wait if their pilots weren't instrument rated, because they couldn't see."
"Oh. So, you could land a plane at night in the rain?"
He nodded. "I'll have to learn this plane before I'm comfortable doing that, though," he noted, motioning at the dashboard. "It has a hell of a lot more bells and whistles than anything I've ever flown before."
"You don't have to take tests on this plane to get your rating?"
"Nope. Once you get your license, the FAA assumes you're responsible enough to know what the hell you're doing if you fly a plane with a new instrument system that's in the same class of plane you're already rated to fly. But this plane is just a little different than the usual personal plane. This is what's called a utility class plane, love, and those have special rules… but this particular plane doesn't. Usually, I'd have to be rated on a plane classified as utility–and I already am, truth be told–but this model is part of a loophole. It technically falls into utility rating because it can go faster than two hundred knots, but it's also a private model airplane, so the FAA waives rating requirements for it, since it's not meant for the same utility as other planes in the class. Most utility planes are helicopters and small commuter planes, like most dual-engine prop planes. This is a private plane, so while it's classified as a utility plane, I don't have to rate on it to fly it, I can treat it like any other private plane. That means that I'm the one who's responsible for understanding the plane and being able to operate it safely, and that means studying its systems. I learned to fly using a Garmin, the same system in this plane, so at least I don't have to learn that much. I just need to study the manual and learn how the plane operates, learn how its anti-icing system and such work. Those are new to me."
"Oh. Well, show me some of this. If you teach me, it'll reinforce you."
He chuckled. "Sure, we'll go through it together," he told her, pulling out the key to bring up the plane's electrical systems. "Maybe I'll make a pilot out of you," he grinned.
"Just think of it, my handsome fox," Jessie mused, watching him as he put the key in the plane and enabled its electrical systems, causing the dashboard to light up an boot. "Being able to see my family whenever we want. I never really thought of what it would mean to have a husband with a pilot's license," she giggled.
"It never really meant anything until right now," he answered. "I've been too busy with work, and we've had no money, I couldn't really use it until now. It would be cheaper to fly commercial than it would be to rent a plane to fly to Cincinnati, pretty kitty. I guess I can't completely hate my family now," he chuckled. "I know they bought me this just to alleviate their own guilt, and maybe pacify Vil a little bit, but I'll take it. I guess my vaunted resistance to money is a sham," he said ruefully. "The instant they dangled something shiny in my face, I snapped it up like any other greedy bastard."
"Not at all," she protested. "You accepted what was given to you in good faith, love, and something you could both appreciate and use. And you didn't take Vil's offer to buy you a house or give you a lot of money, did you? You took one thing, something you can use and will appreciate, and I think that's all you'll ever take. After all, what else do we need?"
"God, I love you," he said sincerely, reaching over and putting his paw on her shoulder.
"I'm so glad you do," she said with a teasing smile. "Else I'd have to kill you."
He laughed delightedly. "That's one way to defend your honor, I suppose. Knock off the only guy who's ever besmirched it."
"It wasn't besmirched," she grinned. "You did follow through and marry me, didn't you?"
"I guess I did. I have no idea what insanity came over me," he sighed forlornly, then adroitly put his paws over his head to deflect the inevitable whack. Jessie did try to playfully smack him, but then her face turned fearful and she looked around.
"I didn't hit any buttons, did I?" she asked nervously.
"Jessie, love, calm down," he told her soothingly. "Nothing's going to happen with us on the ground. You couldn't get the plane moving no matter what you hit in here, the parking brake's engaged."
"Well, I could hit that, couldn't I? Or start the plane by accident?"
"I guess you could, but do you know which buttons to press in which order to make the engine start?"
"Umm, no."
"Then don't worry yourself one little bit," he chuckled. "We won't be here long, I promise. I know this must be boring for you."
"No! I think it's really neat! I have a husband who's a pilot," she smiled. "I'm going to use this for the subject of a paper I'm writing for my English composition class. Our professor wants us to write a paper based on something in our lives, complete with three topics of research comparing my experience with other people's. So I think I'll do it on people who have pilot's licenses and how it makes their lives different from others."
"Sounds fun," he said honestly. "I'm looking forward to seeing how you do it."
"It should be interesting. The professor said it'd be more fun if we picked something that was interesting to us. She's right, of course."
"Naturally. Writing about something that's boring or sucks makes it a chore. Now, back to what we were doing, showing you how this all works."
They spent nearly four hours sitting in the cockpit, interrupted only by trips to the small terminal to go to the bathroom, as Kit studied the plane's systems and went over the checklists for preflight, startup, takeoff, landing, postflight, and shutdown. Jessie was right in that teaching her all about it made him pay much more attention, and allowed him to memorize it himself more quickly. Kit refreshed himself on the Garmin–it had been a year since he'd flown and used one–and had everything come back to him quickly. The Garmin almost made learning to navigate the normal way obsolete, since it told you exactly where you were, where you were going, and which direction to go. It even showed an expected time of arrival, elapsed flight time, fuel burn ratios, weather or air restriction warnings, and kept a log of it all. He moved on to the weather system, a very handy little integrated part of the Garmin that streamed weather data in from XM satellite through the satellite antenna, and also gave him internet connectivity since the Blue Sky system used the same antenna. With the weather system, he'd never find himself flying headlong into a thunderstorm, it was literally like having weather radar in his plane. The plane had a very good TCAS system, the same system that had been in the 172s, part of the Garmin suite, which even gave audio warnings in addition to warnings on the right monitor multi-function display, the MFD. The MFD would let him put up a map that showed the ground terrain, his projected route, other planes in the area, and any weather features all in one easy to read display. After that, he taught her about radio etiquette, and how it was used. "Some planes don't even really need radios," he told here. "Small planes flying out of private airstrips using visual flight rules and staying away from restricted airspace, they technically don't need them, though no pilot in his right mind would fly without one. If you had an emergency, how would you warn anyone or get help?"
"I can see that," Jessie nodded. "What does VHF mean?"
"Very High Frequency, it's a range of radio frequencies set aside mainly for aviation, commercial, and military use. Virtually all aviation radios use either VHF or UHF, Ultra High Frequency. UHF doesn't have as much range, though."
"Oh," she said, typing on the laptop she had in her lap.
Kit did a radio check with the little local tower for her, showing her how it worked, and explained how certain frequencies were dedicated to certain things. "Love, how do you know where to go?" she asked. "I mean, you have the plane, but how do you know where you're going? Does the GPS tell you?"
"You mean how will I know where to land if I need gas, or I'm going to a city I've never visited before?"
"Yeah."
"Come on, let's go to the terminal and warm up, I'll show you," he said with a smile.
They locked up the plane, and he took her into the terminal, which was pretty close to where the plane had been parked, in a short-term tie down parking area. Kit also needed to go in there and find out where the space that Vil had rented for him was located. She hadn't really noticed much when they came in that morning because she ran straight to the bathroom, so he took her into the pilot's lounge, which was actually much more. He wasn't sure what they called it here, but up in his old flight school they called it the lounge. It was a large room occupied by three other furs at the moment, with a huge map on one wall and four computers at desks under it. Books were lined into bookshelves near the desks, filled with manuals, flight books, and old navigation books. "This is how we do it, pretty kitty," he said, motioning at one of the computers. "Of course, this is the fast and easy way. When I did my flight training, we had to be able to do it all the old way, using maps and a calculator and lots of books with airport information. See, the computer has a list of every available airport in North America," he explained as he sat down at one of them and brought up the nav program. "I tell it where I want to go, and it gives me a list of available places to land at the destination. It even tells me things like what radio frequencies the airport uses, how much their parking fees are, if they charge landing fees, if they have maintenance facilities, and if there's a rental car agency either close by or that will deliver a car to the airport. Here, let's put in Cincinnati," he said, typing it in. Immediately a list of six airfields popped up, with icons by the names to represent the services they offered. "Here we go, this is where I'd land if I were going to Cincinnati. It has overnight parking for visiting planes, it's real close to your house, they offer a courtesy car for visiting pilots as well as a rental car agency that will deliver a car if we make a reservation, and it has a hotel right beside it. It's also a municipal airport, so I wouldn't have to deal with all the crap I'd take landing at a big airport, like Bergstrom. This one has a control tower and two strips," he continued, pointing them out when he clicked on the airport. "It also has a maintenance shop rated for working on all models of piston and small-size turboprop planes. Ooh, this one has jet mechanics available, too," he noted. "Guess some private jets are parked there. So, now that we know where we're going and where we want to land, next we'll file a flight plan," he said, minimizing the window and bringing up the FAA program. "Since we'll be flying above the visual ceiling of eighteen thousand feet, we have to tell the FAA. They need to know where I'm going, when I'm going, and what altitude I intend to fly at. So, let's tell them that we're going to Cincinnati, and landing at Regional Municipal Airport," he said, inputting the information. "Now, we're leaving next weekend, so our flight plan is for Saturday the twenty-fifth. So, we'll tell them we're leaving at approximately six p.m. Now, they're asking here how many stops I need to make to refuel, which is something I'd have to work out using my plane's weight and the size of my gas tanks to determine my safe maximum range. Pilots do use math," he chuckled, pointing at the next field. "Our plane can make the trip nonstop as long as it's just the two of us, so I'll tell it none. If I did need to make a stop, it would recommend an airfield along our planned flight path where we could land and refuel."
"What if you have to go to the bathroom?" she asked.
Kit chuckled. "Well, if you're not carrying a portable urinal in the plane, or you need to a real toilet, then you make an unscheduled stop," he winked. "Those are allowed. These flight plans aren't set in stone with us private pilots like they are with commercial planes, they're just to help the FAA better control traffic. If we need to stop or change our flight plan, we radio in to whichever controller's jurisdiction we're in and tell them. They make the changes for us and we're good to go."
"Ah, I see. It's not that bad, is it?"
"Not at all," he smiled. "Now, if we stayed under eighteen thousand feet the whole time, we wouldn't have to file a flight plan at all," he told her. "That's visual flight rules. We'd just have to avoid restricted airspace and obey any traffic control orders radioed to us, that's the only real rule."
"I see. So, if we fly at, what was it, twenty five thousand, won't we be sharing the sky with big airline planes?"
"Not really, miss," one of the furs interrupted. He was a tall, lanky canine, looking like a mixed canine mutt, with black fur but a brown face, and a single brown mitten on his right paw. "The FAA keeps things layered. The big planes fly over thirty thousand most of the time, while us private planes usually occupy the area underneath."
"Oh, I see."
"Hi, by the way," he chuckled, offering his paw. "Brad Hennings."
"Jessie Vulpan," she smiled, taking his paw. "My husband, Kit. He's the pilot, not me."
"Well, it sounds like he's teaching you well," Brad smiled warmly.
"I'm trying," Kit chuckled. "Local?"
"Yeah, it's my weekend with the plane," he grinned. "I'm fractional."
"What's that?" Jessie asked.
"It means me and a few other pilots jointly own a plane, and we share it," he answered. "This is my weekend with the plane, so I'm going to go have a little spin around with my girlfriend. I'm thinking of going to El Paso. Never been there."
"Nice, what kind of plane?" Kit asked.
"A Cessna Skyhawk, but we bought it new, so it has a Garmin in it. It's really nice. What do you have?"
"We have a, um, Cessna four hundred," Jessie said, looking at her laptop.
"Nice!" Brad said animatedly. "I read that Cessna didn't change a single thing when they bought out Columbia. Is it all the same?"
"I never really looked at the Columbias, so I'm not sure," Kit said. "I've been kinda out of the game for a while."
"Yeah, it can happen," Brad nodded. "I went about two years without any logged hours. God, I hated getting the physical after that," he laughed. "I was halfway through my instrument rating, too. I had to do it all over again."
"Eww," Kit sounded. "I feel your pain. Getting IFR was such a freakin' bitch."
"Amen, brother, amen," Brad chuckled. "But it's all over now. I'm thinking of trying for my commercial. I have all the logged hour requirements three times over, and I have my IFR. I'd just have to do the tests."
"I'd recommend it. I did it through a one forty-one program when I went through flight school. When I graduated, I had my commercial."
"That's the best way," Brad nodded. "All at once, no redundant crap. Thinking of trying for an instructor's license?"
"Nah, not really. It's a lot of money for something I'd almost never use."
"True. But, you could teach your wife without having to pay for it," he grinned.
"I can do that anyway," he chuckled. "They don't know who is controlling the plane once you take off," he winked.
Brad laughed. "True, true. I've let my girlfriend fly, but haven't let her land or take off. You can teach her that way, it just looks a little fishy when it comes time to document for her license."
Kit laughed. "Yah, true."
"So, you gonna settle in here?"
"We live in Austin, the plane was just parked here after I took delivery," Kit said. "I need to find hangar space for it."
"Good luck," Brad said with a frown. "I was on a waiting list for nearly eight months to get a Tee hangar here."
"It's that bad?"
"It's bad," Brad nodded. "Most of the airports around here are really small and constrained by the towns they're in, so they can't expand. That puts hangar space at a premium. My Skyhawk spent eight months at a tie down before I got a Tee. You got an FBO yet?"
"I'm going to just go freelance until I find hangar space. No use hiring an FBO until I know where I'm going to park my plane," Kit answered, to which Brad nodded in understanding. An FBO was a fixed base operator, which was basically a flight services company… kind of like a gas station, garage, and concierge all rolled into one. Most of them offered fuel and maintenance for private and business planes, but larger ones also offered services like cleaning inside and out, de-icing, oxygen tank refills, and lavatory maintenance. Most FBOs also had pilot perks in their hangar terminals like sleeping bunks, showers, lounges, courtesy cars, concierge services, and so on, for they were major selling points for an FBO. Some of the large multi-airport "franchise" FBOs even offered services like aircraft sales, or offered hangar space to clients to house their planes. Most private pilots hired an FBO to maintain their planes, but Kit would hold off on that until he knew exactly where he was going to permanently hangar his plane. Virtually all airports and FBOs offered their services to anyone who paid for them, be it someone who hired them to do the work all the time or a transient pilot who needed one-time service or a fuel tank fill up while flying cross country. Contracted planes got services cheaper than one-timers, but that option was always there.
FBOs, oddly enough, often competed with the very airports that housed them. Georgetown was a good example of that. There were six FBOs at the airport of various sizes, and two of them offered to sell aircraft fuel. But the airport also offered aircraft fuel at a public fueling station, and that was where a vast majority of planes would fuel up if they weren't already contracted to an FBO at the airport–it was where Kit would be gassing up his plane himself. Many airports offered their own fueling stations, because it helped the airport earn more money on top of the rent they collected from businesses on the airport, aircraft tie down and hangar space rents from pilots, and landing fees they charged to planes that landed at their airports, if they charged them. Georgetown did not charge landing fees to land there, because it was a small, general aviation airport, and not charging landing fees was often a factor determining if a pilot landed at an airport. So, instead of charging landing fees, Georgetown offered air fuel, called AVGas, at a public fueling station at competitive prices, which probably earned them more money than the landing fees would.
That was probably another reason why Vil had his plane delivered here… he had no doubt that Bergstrom charged landing fees.
"Well, let me sit down and check out airfields in El Paso," he chuckled. "Have a good trip!"
"You too," Kit returned, and the canine wandered over to a free computer and sat down.
"Were you serious?" Jessie asked. "About teaching me to fly?"
"Would you like to?" he asked.
"I, I don't know. Maybe. We'll see, after we fly to Cincinnati," she said, her eyes speculative. "But I have so much else to do, and the baby–"
"Love, it'll always be here, if you want to learn. There's no time limit. We have all the time in the world."
"We'll see. Okay, so, what's next?"
Under Jessie's eye, Kit completed the flight plan, then even filed it. "There. Now it's all set, we can go to see your folks next weekend."
"You think we can?" she asked excitedly.
"I think I'll be ready by next Saturday," he told her. "The systems on the plane are much easier than I thought. I'll feel confident flying it cross country next week, as long as I break it in," he said with a sudden smile. "Let's take it up!"
"Go flying? Don't we have to–"
"Nah, we'll keep it under eighteen thousand, so we can have a little joy ride," he told her. "Wanna go for a flight, Misses Vulpan?"
She laughed. "I'm a little nervous, but I'd love to, Mister Vulpan," she replied.
"The first time is always scary," he assured her as they stood up. "My first time in a plane, I nearly threw up. And my first solo, I almost wet my pants."
"I can't believe that," Jessie laughed. "You'd never be that nervous about anything!"
"Well, you start getting really friendly with God when you're sitting in the plane by yourself for the first time and heading down the runway."
Jessie giggled. "I don't think I believe you," she teased.
"Well, let's see how fearless you are, Misses Vulpan," he challenged. "Trust me enough to take you flying?"
"Such a silly question," she retorted.
Her playfulness turned to nerves when they got in the plane and he started it up, after he performed a thorough preflight check, and had to fight a little with the headset she needed to wear; piston engine planes weren't nearly as loud as jets or turboprops, but there was some noise, and the headsets helped block it out. He helped her adjust her microphone, then put on his own headset and plugged them both in, setting it so only his headset would transmit through the radio, and both sets were set for the intercom. She was quiet as he went down the checklist for preflight, very still when he started the engines, and was a little fidgety when they taxied out.
Kit was impressed. The plane was quiet. They didn't really even need the headsets, it wasn't much louder than a car inside, quiet enough for them to speak in normal voices and be heard, with just a background droning about as loud as it would be driving down interstate with the windows down. It wasn't entirely quiet in the cockpit, but it was much quieter than any other cockpit he'd been in. Amazing acoustic dampening! "Why do we need this for the noise, there isn't much noise," Jessie noted, pointing at her microphone.
"Yah, this is the quietest plane I've ever been in," Kit agreed. "You can take yours off, love, if you don't mind what you hear. I just had you put it on cause the planes I've flown were loud enough for the headsets to help. Your ears would start to ring after a while, and you'll probably want to wear them when we're airborne, since the engine's going faster, and will be a little louder."
"Okay, I'll leave it on, then."
She got a little nervous, clutching to her armrest when they took off, but then she gasped when she looked out the window, as they did a slow banking turn while climbing, heading north and away from the restricted airspace around Austin. "Wow!" she exclaimed, looking down at the ground through her side window.
"Yeah, it's pretty, isn't it?" he said, looking over at her as he leveled out around four thousand feet and puttered off to the northwest, keeping an eye on his MFD window to make sure no other planes were around; using visual flight rules, he was responsible for avoiding a midair collision, so knowing where other planes were was critical. Most planes had transponders, and those transponders showed up on his window because the transponder fed that data to the Garmin through telemetry beacons with which the transponder maintained contact. "We'll go out about fifty miles and head back in, shouldn't take more than an hour given I'm gonna be going slow."
"No, go fast!" she said excitedly. "How fast can we go?"
"Well, you won't really feel it, but at this altitude, I think about two hundred knots is the best we could manage. It'll suck all our gas to do it, though, and that gas is five dollars a gallon, love."
"Oh," she said, a little disappointed. "What's a knot?"
"It's a little over a mile an hour," he answered. "Ten knots is about eleven and a half miles an hour or so. Our normal cruising speed is hundred seventy-four knots, which is just about two hundred miles an hour. We can't really do that down here, we need the thinner air at around twenty five thousand to go at that speed without burning up all our gas."
"Oh, so, the lower we are, the more gas it takes?"
"More or less," he said. "It's a little more complicated than that, but you can sum it up that way. The air's much thinner higher up, which lets us go faster and without as much air resistance. That's why airliners always cruise above thirty thousand. Much more fuel efficient, not to mention much less turbulence."
"I get it. It's not that hard."
"It can be for us. This plane isn't pressurized, pretty kitty, so if we go over fourteen thousand feet, we have to wear these oxygen breathers," he said, picking up the white tube that would affix over his nose. "We only have five hours of oxygen for four people, but that's not a big deal, since we only have about five hours of flight time above fourteen thousand anyway, and with only two of using it it'll last ten hours. We can only carry so much gas."
"I never thought of that," she said with a surprised look. "Are they uncomfortable?"
"Try it on, cause you'll be wearing it when we do go see your parents," he told her. "I'm not flying that far at low altitude, it'll murder our fuel efficiency. If we want to do it in one leg, without stopping, we have to fly high."
The good thing about a decked out plane was that it had all the cool toys. The plane had XM Satellite radio and was enabled for internet access via satellite thanks to the Blue Sky equipment and account Vil had set up, which was a different system from the Garmin and the weather system, but the Garmin knew the Blue Sky was there and could use it as well. Since the plane was literally connected to the internet, the Garmin could access internet information, like how the weather system downloaded real-time weather information from the Weather Service. Kit had Jessie get out her laptop and have it search for networks, and she was a bit astounded when her laptop connected to the internet through the airplane. They listened to XM radio and chatted while they flew out about a hundred miles, then turned around and headed back for the airport, but the whole time Kit was seeing the unique plane systems in use, after he studied them for hours on the tarmac. Jessie kept her nose glued to the side window, looking down on the sun-dappled ground below, with the crosshatched farm fields, ranch pastures, roads, buildings, and houses. They passed over a large stream, nearly a river, and then over the rugged hills that dominated the area north and west of Austin, filled with houses. She pointed things out to him, like a golf course, or a large cluster of houses winding along a hillside, or a baseball diamond. They turned on the air conditioner when the cockpit began heating up, and Kit was highly pleased… climate control in small planes wasn't the best in the world. But this plane used HVAC for climate control, the same system used in jets, and it kept the cockpit nice and comfortable. As far as the unusual cockpit configuration went, Kit had no complaints. It took him a little getting used to the side-mounted angled control stick, but it rested at the natural angle of his arm, and he found he had a very comfortable control of it, able to rest his elbow on the armrest and still keep hold of the stick. The controls were electrical, fly by wire, and were responsive and sensitive, which made it a joy to fly. No wrestling with a stick or rudder pedals in crosswinds. The cockpit layout was nice and practical, and everything was at his fingertips as every flight instrument was right where he expected it, since most of them were displayed on the primary window of the Garmin. The Garmin's control pad was on the center console, with additional controls on the dash, surrounding the twin display monitors, but everything was laid out exactly as it had been in his training plane; Garmins were all the same. After just an hour in the air, Kit felt confident he could fly the plane cross country, since the plane's systems and displays were either fed into the Garmin or were well organized and easy to read–indeed, the Cessna 400's cockpit was designed around a Garmin. He had only one beef with the plane, and that was a silly little thing; no sun visor. Kit did see that getting some sunglasses was going to be mandatory, though, since the large curved cockpit windscreen had nowhere to put a sun visor… flying northwest hadn't been entirely fun. Outside of that one thing, the plane was freakin' perfect. "Alright, we're going to descend," he warned her as they approached Georgetown, showing clearly on the map on his right window, the Multi-Feed Display or MFD, and saw that there was one plane about four miles west of them. "Let me radio the tower and get landing clearance."
Jessie was quiet as they landed, and Kit taxied them back to their parking spot using the rudder pedals; the plane had a fixed nose wheel, so it steered with differential braking on the rear wheels. "So, did you like it, pretty kitty?" he asked as he powered down the engine and started to perform the post flight checklist.
"That was awesome!" she gushed, giving him a happy look. "So, can we go to Cincinnati next weekend? Please?"
"We already have the flight plan filed," he winked.
"Thank you!" she squealed, lunging over the center console and giving him a fierce hug. "I have to call Vil and thank her myself for them giving you this plane, my handsome fox. It's going to be so wonderful to have it!"
"Love, that makes me glad I took it all by itself," he told her seriously. "If you like it, then we keep it."
"Yes we're keeping this!" she told him excitedly. "I love this thing!" she cried, pattering her paws on the dashboard in rapid staccato, then flinching her paws away as if afraid she might break something.
Kit laughed. "I'll have to find you a flight instructor," he winked.
"I would not mind at all," she said with utter sincerity. "If we have it, I'd love to learn how to fly it all by myself!"
"Well, I do hope you'll let me come along," he said flippantly, which made her burst out laughing and smack him fondly on the arm. "Let me finish the post flight, then we can lock it up and head home."
"Okay. I gotta go pee," she said, reaching for the door latch.
Kit chuckled as she climbed out, dropped down off the wing, then rushed for the terminal. She'd been bitten by the flying bug. Now would come the process of converting her to the Dark Side.
The plane was exciting, but there were, honestly, much more important things for him to worry about. The plane had been a wonderful distraction, but today, Sunday, he had real work to do, so much work that he begged off Sunday poker so he could focus on the task at paw.
The bonds.
Kit was quite a savvy businessman, and a savvy businessman never does anything without a plan. He was savvy enough to know that he didn't know enough to form that plan himself, so he sought out the advice of someone that did have that kind of knowledge… Vil.
As Jessie spent the day cooking, doing homework, going over to visit the poker crew and take them some food, and excitedly telling her parents all about their flight and plans to come up over the phone, Kit was on video conference with Vil. Kit had tried to get Jessie to take part in the discussion, but she just told him that she trusted him to take care of it, that she'd really have no idea what they were talking about anyway, and left it to them to handle it. After counting up the 15 bonds and calculating their combined worth with interest, Kit found that he had $117,743.28 worth of them, and that much money demanded wise and prudent investment. One didn't just stick it in a savings account somewhere. And that was where Vil came in. She wasn't a financial planner, but she was more than well versed enough to know where the good investments were. Together, over the course of the day, they hammered out a highly detailed and thorough investment portfolio for the money, divesting the capital through multiple investments; stocks, bonds, annuities, certificates of deposit, and commodities, mainly precious metals. They decided that it was only wise to leave $10,000 of it out as available cash in case of emergencies, which Kit would deposit in a special money market account, giving him access to that money while it earned more interest than it would in another account. "God, I'm going to have to either hire an accountant or bone up on my tax codes," Kit grunted as he typed up the plan, which he'd send to Vil to let her check over to ensure he had it all copied correctly. "I'll have to file a ten forty next year, no way will we get away with an A or EZ form, not with all this interest and capital gains."
"Well, it's a good kind of pain," Vil chuckled. "Much better than you living out of your boots. Dear God, bro, you have no idea how worried I've been thinking about you down there with nothing but your salary, and nothing in the bank and no investments. I'll sleep much better now knowing you're set up."
"You shouldn't worry about stuff like that, sis," he told her. "I know how to manage our money. The only reason we've been so broke was because of the wedding and Christmas and the honeymoon. We kinda went overly crazy in the keys and burned up our savings. Taking that day trip to Key West broke us."
Vil laughed. "Well, you're entitled to the occasional moment of insanity," she grinned. "But now you have some reserves if that ever happens again, and that's what makes me so relieved. Now, if you have some kind of emergency and can't get hold of me for some reason, I know you have enough held back to get you through until you can get hold of me."
"Well, thanks for that concern, sis," Kit said mildly. "Oh, and expect a call from Jessie sometime today."
"Oh? What does she need?"
"Nothing, she's going to thank you and the family for the plane," he said. "She's hooked."
Vil laughed. "So, you've taken it up already?"
He nodded. "Yesterday. I wasn't planning to, but the control systems in it are so user friendly, I felt safe taking it for a short flight to get the hang of it. Next time I'm taking some Windex and paper towels so I can clean Jessie's nose prints off the glass."
Vil laughed harder. "She liked it?"
"Now she wants a pilot's license," he told her. "She said that since we own it, she wants to learn how to fly it."
"Well, that shouldn't be too hard," Vil said, waving her hand negligently. "I'll–"
"You'll let me handle that. I am her husband."
She gave him a quick grin. "Alright, I'll leave that one alone."
"You'd better. Okay, sis, here it comes," he said, saving the file, then uploading it to her. "Check it over."
"No sweat, bro," she said, her paws working under her, where he couldn't see. "You gonna let me handle this, or are you going to do it?"
"You can help with the stocks, but I'll get the rest," he answered. "You can buy the stocks much cheaper and faster than I can, and I can handle the others over the phone or at a few offices here in town. I know where to go. With you doing the stocks, I can do it all in one day."
"It's the Vulpan in you," she winked. "Call Jessie over here."
"Sure. Jess!" he shouted. "My evil bitch of a sister wants to talk to you!"
Jessie laughed from the kitchen and scurried in. "hold on, Dad, I'll give you to Kit for a minute," she said into the phone, and pushed it at him. "Stop being mean to your sister," she chided him, swatting him on the end of his nose with two fingers as she leaned down into the range of the webcam. Kit traded places with her, standing up and giving his attention to the phone.
"Did she chew your ear off about yesterday?" he asked John.
"A little," he chuckled. "She seems quite happy and excited about your plane. She was only mentioning your coming baby and her pregnancy about once a minute rather than every other sentence."
Kit laughed. "Well, I'm glad she's keeping her priorities straight," he noted.
"I have to admit, I rather like the idea of it myself. It's very nice knowing you can be here six hours after we call you."
"We could do that no matter what flying commercially, but this way we can do it basically for free. Vil and my family gave me that plane, and you know how Vil sees a gift."
"It costs you nothing," he noted.
"Exactly. She gave me a credit card you use at airports to buy gas and pay for maintenance, and she's paying the insurance and the taxes and everything. So, we basically have a free plane at our disposal."
"I'm going to have to thank Vil next time I call her," John chuckled. "How many furs does it hold?"
"Four."
"You couldn't squeeze someone in between the two in the back seat? We couldn't squeeze Ben in there and fly to Columbus, for example?"
"It's not a bench seat back there, John. A fifth fur would have to sit on the floor, and that's illegal. I wouldn't allow it. I'd like to keep my license, cause the FAA is really anal about following the rules."
"Oh. Do planes have trunks? Where do you put your suitcases?"
"It has a cargo hold, which is a plane's trunk," he affirmed.
"So, you could bring stuff up with you?"
"Up to a point," he said. "Personal planes aren't good shipping planes, John. Everything's about weight in a private plane, and there's not much extra weight to play with. The plane only has an extra four hundred pounds of load rating if I fill up the gas tanks, and that four hundred pounds doesn't go as far as you might think. That weight doesn't include anything, not even the pilot. So stick two furs in there, and you've just eaten that four hundred pounds. Then add in their luggage, carry-ons, food, necessities, and the weight gets used up quick."
"Yes, I see. But, with just two of you, you could put some extra luggage in the plane."
"With just two of us packing light, yeah, we could. We'll have about a hundred pounds of weight open to us. The old pilot's assumption is two hundred pounds per fur with average baggage."
"Kit, Jessie doesn't weigh two hundred pounds," John said with a chuckle. "If she's an ounce over one twenty, I'd be amazed."
"When you take her and add everything she's carrying to it, like her suitcase, her purse, and our camera bag, and her laptop, and so on and so on, yeah, it gets pretty close to that," he answered seriously.
"Ah, I didn't think of that."
"That's where the weight goes," Kit chuckled. "That and we'll put some stuff in the cockpit that we might need, like an emergency kit, atlas, a blanket, that kind of thing. All of that adds to the weight too. Everything you put in the plane adds weight, and that's the one thing a pilot never ignores."
"Well, think you can take me and Hannah up for a flight? I've never been in a small plane before."
"I'd love to," Kit answered. "We can do a lap around Cincinnati."
"It sounds like it'll be fun."
"Jessie wants a pilot's license now," Kit laughed, which earned him a light, playful smack on the knee. "What?"
"It's not a joke!" she protested.
"I never said it was, pretty kitty! I just think it's funny how quickly you decided you want one."
"I take it she's being mean to you?" John asked lightly.
"Eternally," Kit answered in a suffering voice, which made John laugh.
"So, when will you get here?"
"It'll depend on when we leave, which depends on when I get out of work on Saturday," he answered. "Saturdays are kinda free-wheeling for me. I'm done when I get my work done, so it'll come down to how much I have on my plate. We'll fly back on Sunday night, since Jessie needs to be in school Monday morning. But she can sleep on the plane, so we can leave really late."
"He never lets me miss even a single class," Jessie complained to Vil, which made her laugh. John chuckled when he repeated her words to him.
"Good, I'm glad you're keeping her on the path, Kit," he said approvingly.
"That's going to be much trickier when she starts coming to term," Kit said, "and the baby's gonna mess with her final semester, but we'll manage. I won't let Jessie get this close to her degree and quit now. She will graduate."
"She'd better, or she's gonna owe me and her mother sooo much money," John said, which made Kit burst out laughing.
"Okay, trade me again," Jessie said, and she took the phone while Kit sat back down at the computer.
"So, is it all good?" Kit asked, looking at his monitor.
"Everything's right," she affirmed. "You gonna get to work on that?"
"I have tomorrow off. It should all be done by close of business tomorrow," he promised her.
"Sounds good, bro."
"Kit! Dad wants to know if you can ask Rick to trade days off," Jessie called. "Take Saturday off instead of Monday, and give us an extra day."
"Yeah, I can do that, as long as they don't mind picking us up really late," he called back. "I still have a late day on Friday, you know."
"Sounds like you should have fun up there," Vil noted. "Jessie will get two whole days to listen to her mother carp about getting pregnant."
"Hannah's not nearly as opposed to it as I thought she would be," Kit said musingly. "I'm sure she's going to sit us down and have a very long talk about responsibility and taking care of the baby, but she seems honestly enthusiastic about the idea of being a grandmother."
"You know she will," Vil chuckled. "I'd take a copy of your portfolio statement with you to wave in her face when she starts complaining that you can't afford the baby."
Kit laughed. "That may not be a bad idea. She'll know that even if I leave Jessie, she can always get half of our assets for the baby," he winked.
"Like you'd ever leave Jessie," Vil snorted. "You're a Catholic. Doesn't she understand what that means?"
"Well, we weren't married under Catholic sacraments," Kit noted. "No Catholic wedding, no need for an annulment."
"Bro, you're about ten seconds from getting slapped," Vil warned in a very unfriendly tone.
"Sis, get real. I'll never leave Jessie, and you know it."
"Still, you don't even joke about something like that," she told him flatly. "Sometimes with you, it's hard to tell what's a joke and what's not. Hannah doesn't know you as well as I do, bro, and she'd flip out if she ever heard it."
"I'm not stupid enough to ever say something like that in front of her."
"At least you have that much sense," she said with a nod. "Oh, by the way, Sheila and Muffy left here about five hours ago. They should be getting there any time now."
"Today? Weren't they supposed to leave yesterday? I thought they were just too busy clubbing or something to stop by and see us."
"Yeah, but Sheila's parents made her stay over for some reason, and Muffy decided to wait for her. Probably to grill her about her decision… they're not too happy about it. They want her to stay in Harvard. But, they can't deny that she's determined, and I think in a way that makes them happy. They think she's finally growing up."
"Alright. Odds are, they'll spend the evening over here. I'd better warn Jessie."
"She already knows, I talked to her this morning."
"Ah, that would explain why she's done all that cooking. I thought she was just too excited to sit still."
"Well, I'll let you get to it, bro, I have some work to do here. A few reports to read, and a termination to write up."
"Uh oh, who?" Kit asked.
"Kelly Parmon, senior vice president of safety," she said, her face grim. "He let our ISO certification logs and paperwork get out of date, and I was some kind of pissed off when I found out."
"How bad was the fine?"
"Fifty thousand dollars," she fumed. "That's a pink slip with no warning in this company."
"Yeah, I'd say it is," Kit agreed. "How on earth did he let that go?"
"Total absolute incompetence," she growled, then she used several rather colorful adjectives to more fully describe her feelings. "It's not like it's even that hard to keep that current!"
"Who are you promoting to take his place?"
"I'm going inside the family. Cousin Terry." Terry, or Kitstrom Terrence Vulpan, was the second child of uncle Tom. From what Kit remembered, he was twenty-one years old, just six months younger than Kit, and had graduated from Yale at the age of nineteen… and not because he slacked. Terry had skipped two grades in elementary school, and graduated from Yale in three years with a bachelor's in business. Last Kit heard, he was just starting his Master's courses at Yale, and was also looking into trying for Oxford the way Vil had done.
"Terry? How long has he been working at the shipyard?"
"About a year, but he's been pretty impressive," she said. "Right now he's a vice president over in accounting, and he runs a tight ship. Nothing but good performance reviews out of his department. I'm sure as hell not giving him the job because he's a Vulpan. That's not a rock job, cause the government will fine our asses to oblivion if he doesn't do it right. He earned his chance to prove himself, so I'm giving him some real responsibility and we'll see how he does."
"I think he'll do alright," Kit said. "Terry is one smart cookie."
"No doubt," Vil nodded. "He got through school faster than any of us did. He was only nineteen when he graduated from Yale with his Bachelor's, and he just finished his Master's degree in December."
"I'm surprised he decided to go into the company. I always thought he'd go off on his own."
"I think he will, but I'll teach him as much as I can until he does," she chuckled. "I won't mind losing him as long as he goes out there and does something with himself, and also doesn't go into business competing against me. Then I'd have to destroy him."
Kit chuckled. "No mercy even for the family?"
"I'd come after him even harder, cause he should know better than to try to compete against me," she snorted, which made him burst out into helpless laughter.
"Dear God, I married a barbarian and my sister is a heartless bitch. Where did I go so wrong?" he lamented.
"That's Miss Heartless Bitch to you, buster," she teased in reply. "Now, I really need to go, so I'll talk to you later, bro."
"Alright. Night sis. Love ya."
"I love you too, you little pain in the ass," she grinned, and then she disconnected the conference session.
Jessie was indeed cooking knowing that Sheila and Muffy were coming, for they arrived about a half an hour after he finished talking to Vil. They'd shed their winter clothes the instant they hit Austin, it seemed, for Muffy was wearing a halter and a miniskirt in the brisk forty-five degree evening, showing off a great deal of fur, and Sheila was wearing a Boston Bruins tee shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. "Muffy," Kit greeted, giving her a warm hug, "how's Boston treated you?"
"Coldly," she giggled. "It's been freezing up there! I'm glad to be down here for a couple of days."
"What happened, though? I thought you were supposed to be here yesterday."
"We were supposed to leave yesterday," she growled, giving Sheila a strong look.
Sheila coughed uncomfortably. "Well, blame my mom and dad for that," she said. "I got the freakin' third degree from them. We were packed and like two seconds from catching a ride to the airport when my mom and dad waylaid me and made me explain everything to them again," she sighed. "They tried to talk me out of it. Er, you do know, don't you?"
"Of course we do, silly femme," Kit chuckled. "Vil explained it to us. I have to say, I'm impressed, cousin. Your idea to go to both schools at the same time, that was impressive."
"Thanks," she said with a modest smile, coming over and hugging him as Muffy greeted Jessie, and got a friendly, warm hug, which startled his cousin a little.
"So, the infamous Party Pack loses a member," Kit teased.
Sheila laughed. "Only temporarily," she winked. "Besides, I can always start a new Party Pack down here. I'm an Austin Vulpan now, just like you."
"Ooh, can I be a part-time member of your Party Pack, Sheila?" Muffy asked with a little bounce, entirely overacted.
Jessie laughed. "Stop being so silly!" she chided. "Are you two hungry? Dinner's almost ready."
"Oh, am I!" Muffy said, getting a bright smile. "What did you make?"
"Jambalaya," she answered. "With garnished asparagus, stewed beets, beef tips and chunked potatoes, and home baked black bread. Oh, and I made us some cherry cobbler for dessert."
"I haven't had jambalaya in forever!" Muffy said with a big grin. "How did you know I like spicy food?"
"I didn't," she admitted with a giggle. "But Kit does, so I have to indulge him from time to time."
"She made me a thank you dinner," Kit laughed. "Because I was extra-nice to her."
"You should be the one in there cooking for her," Muffy teased, and she hugged Jessie again. "Congratulations, cousin-in-law!"
"Aww, thanks, hon," Jessie said with a demure smile.
"Yeah, congrats you two!" Sheila added, hugging Kit, then hugging Jessie in turn. She put her paw on Jessie's stomach and patted it gently. "You proved our cousin's a real Vulpan, Jess, he knocked you up not three months after you were married!"
Jessie gave Sheila a prim look, but Muffy continued to dig. "If he was a real Vulpan, he'd have got her pregnant before they were engaged," she announced.
"That would have been a real trick, since we were engaged so quickly after we entered that phase of our relationship," Jessie said, her cheeks trying to ruffle.
"Well, Kit's full of surprises, as well as a few other things," Sheila said with a sly grin at her cousin, which earned her a punch on the arm from him.
They sat down to dinner not long afterward, and spent a very pleasant evening catching up with the goings-on up in Boston. Muffy had arranged to take two days off from school to come down to see him, and Sheila talked about all the work she had ahead of her enrolling in the University of Texas. "They have a great culinary arts program," she said. "I looked around, and it's the best one in Texas. It's just nice that it's where I want to live, too."
"I'm still surprised that you want to move," Muffy said.
"I love it here, Muff," Sheila said sincerely. "Kit and Jessie are awesome family to have around, and I have a lot of great friends who don't care that I'm a Vulpan. Between Jessie and Martha, I've already learned so much about cooking!" she said with a bright smile, turning to Jessie. "I cooked for Higgins last week, and he said I did really good!"
"That's nice to hear, Sheila," Jessie said supportively.
"Higgins has been helping me since I went back up, teaching me more about cooking. I wish he'd come down here," she frowned. "But he doesn't want to leave Boston."
"He quit?"
"No, he was one of mom's servants, so he's going back to work in her house," she answered. "I tried to get him to come down here, but I couldn't convince him. I'll just keep up with the maid service, and cooking for myself will give me plenty of practice, so I think I can manage. I still wish he would have come, though. I like Higgins. He's a lot of fun for a butler."
"How did you pull off that deal with Harvard?" Kit asked curiously.
"It took a lot of ass kissing, that's for sure," she laughed. "When that wasn't enough, I had to start threatening to sic my mom on them if they didn't give me what I wanted. That got them. They agreed to shadow me through the filler courses, and I do my business courses in what they call private tutoring," she said, making ditto motions with her fingers. "It's really me just emailing my homework and course assignments to a professor in the business college. I have to go up to Boston twice a semester to take a midterm and a final, and I also have to attend a full semester when I do my capstone project, they wouldn't budge on that. But that's okay, I should be able to manage it."
"What do you mean by shadow?" Jessie asked.
"It's a term that means cheating, basically," Muffy answered. "Sheila will show up on the rolls of those classes, and won't do any work in them, but will graduate with a C average in them on the books. She has to pay double the usual tuition for each course she wants to shadow, though."
"Oh. Some of that under the table stuff Kit says Harvard does for the Vulpans."
"Us and a few other very prominent and rich families," Sheila nodded.
"Yale does it too," Muffy added. "I'm shadowing a couple of courses this semester that I absolutely can't stand."
"The perks of being rich," Sheila grinned. "Anyway, I'll be taking only culinary arts courses at U.T. Well, those and the courses they require for a degree that Harvard credits won't cover," she added. "I'll have to actually take those courses. Eww," she said, making a face.
"You can't cheat at my school," Jessie grinned at her. "You'll do the same work we do!"
"Another low point for the Vulpan family," Sheila sighed. "Being just like normal people."
Jessie gave her a startled look, then both Sheila and Muffy began to laugh. "Be nice," Kit murmured. "Remember, she's feeding you right now. That's not a paw you want to bite."
"Yes, I think I'll have to make you something special next time," Jessie warned.
Muffy grinned. "We'll just bring antacid."
"Cousin, there's nothing you can bring to help when she makes that meal," Kit said mildly, which made Jessie and Sheila giggle.
"Oh, do we speak from experience?" Muffy teased.
"I speak from the experience of never being dumb enough to send her to that spice rack," he retorted.
"What are you planning to do while you're here?" Jessie asked.
Sheila looked at Muffy, and they both grinned at Jessie. "Oh, we have plans," she all but purred in reply.
"Oh dear," Kit sighed. "Love, do we have any honey in the fridge?"
Jessie laughed. "It must be time to teach me the recipe for the famous Vulpan hangover tonic," she giggled.
"Oh, those plans involve you, Jessie," Sheila grinned. "In fact, they start in about a half an hour," she added, looking at her delicate gold watch.
"What's in a half hour?"
"The Top Hat opens," Muffy said with a wicked smile.
Every single strand of fur on Jessie's entire body frizzed out. "No way!" she gasped.
"Oh, yes we are," Sheila told her with an evil grin. "You can't get knocked up by someone else now, you're a total free spirit! And we're going to liberate you from this evil monogamy!"
"You wouldn't dare!" she said in absolute mortification, standing up and glaring at the two of them. "I'd never ever do something like that no matter how drunk you get me, and I'm pregnant!" she shouted. "If either of you even try to give me a drink, I'll beat you up!"
"Relax, love, they're just teasing you," Kit said calmly. "Or at least they'd better be," he added threateningly.
The two Vulpan females laughed almost uncontrollably, Sheila nearly falling out of her chair. "Alright, we're teasing about that, but you are going with us tonight!" she said. "It's femme's night! All the male strippers are going to be there, and you can't miss it!"
"And you'll be our designated driver," Muffy added.
"I have class in the morning!"
"It's only six thirty, you prude!" Sheila accused. "We can have a good three hours of harmless fun ogling naked males and still get you home in time to get to bed."
"I will not!"
"Why not?" Kit asked her. "I think you'll have fun."
"You're sending me to a strip club?" Jessie demanded, a little hotly.
"No, I'm sending you out with your friends," he answered calmly. "If you happen to wander into the Top Hat, so what? I trust you, love. I know you'd never do anything foolish, and I've told you before, I have total faith in you. Did you have fun during your bachelorette party?"
"Well, yeah, but–"
"Then go have fun, my pretty kitty," he told her, leaning over and kissing her on the cheek. "Besides, you'll get home so hot and bothered that I'm guaranteed some action tonight."
"Kit!" Jessie gasped, but then she laughed helplessly.
"See, you have official permission to be naughty!" Sheila said commandingly. "So let's finish this wonderful dinner and get busy!"
"Oh, you can do me one favor," Kit said.
"What is that?"
"Ask them if Allison still works there. I want to talk to her. If she does, either get her phone number or give them my Blackberry work number so she can call me. If she's not, see if they'll give me her contact number."
"Woo, now he's a Vulpan!" Sheila laughed. "Arranging his mistress in front of his wife!"
Kit gave her a nasty look, which made Muffy nearly spray jambalaya all over the table.
"What do you want to talk to Allison for?" Jessie asked.
"I want to interview her for a story," he answered. "I can make her anonymous so nobody knows who I'm talking about and still publish her story. She's a very, very interesting young femme, and I think she'd be the subject of an outstanding piece."
"Sure, I can do that, cousin," Sheila told him. "I'll ask Benny, the bartender. He'll know, and he can pass it on for you." She narrowed her eyes. "Isn't that the one that's the chemistry Master's student who pays for school by stripping and whoring?"
Kit nodded. "And that is why she'll be such a good story."
"Yeah, I'd have to agree," Muffy said seriously.
Jessie gave him a curious look, but said nothing. Kit, seeing it there, headed it off by reaching over and putting his paw on her arm. "Trust me, love, as I trust you."
Jessie's cheeks ruffled, and she nodded.
Kit picked up the dishes for them after they left, and busied himself by checking to see if Rick had assigned him anything over the weekend. When his in box came up empty, he sat on the couch and practiced guitar, at least until his Blackberry rang. He didn't know the number, so he answered it with his ritual greeting. "Lone Star magazine, Kit Vulpan."
"Hello," a femme's voice called. "I was asked to call you."
"Allison?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Good. I'm not sure you remember me, but–"
"Kit Vulpan. Two different colored eyes, missing part of your ear. I danced for you at a party a few months ago."
"So you do remember," Kit chuckled. "Listen, I know this is going to sound unusual–"
"Yes."
"Excuse me?"
"I agree. Your cousin explained what you wanted of me. As long as you guarantee my anonymity, I'll do the interview."
"Nice, nice. Thank you very much."
"Be glad your cousin came tonight. This week is my last here."
"Really? Moving on, moving up, or moving away?"
"Moving up. This is my last semester, and I told them I wouldn't work here beyond that. They've known for two years. They pressed me on the issue, demanding I stay on, so I quit. I could have just walked out, but I agreed to work until Friday just so my regulars know and understand I'm leaving, and that I am not interested in any private arrangements."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Oh, it's about time anyway. I have more than enough money saved now, I decided I'd work after I get my degree, and I don't need this job anymore. It's certainly not because I was doing it for fun."
"Well, that's something we'll talk about during the interview," he said, grabbing a note pad and jotting down some quick notes. "When would you like to meet?"
"Any time tomorrow after three, and any time between one and five from Tuesday to Friday is fine. After Friday, I won't be here anymore, and I'll have the whole weekend available."
"Hmm. We'll be out of town this weekend. Can you hold on a minute? I'll call my wife and ask her if she wouldn't mind inviting you to dinner tomorrow. If you don't mind doing the interview with company, that is."
"She's right here, listening to me," Allison said calmly. "Misses Vulpan, he wants to know if you mind if he interviews me tomorrow at your house during dinner." Kit waited, a bit anxiously. "She agrees."
"Good," Kit sighed. "Don't tell her this, but she's just a little jealous of you. I'm going to interview you with her listening, so she doesn't get the wrong idea."
"I understand," Allison said with a slight hint of amusement. "So, what time tomorrow?"
"How about six or so? I have some things to do that morning, but I should be done by then. We can interview while Jessie cooks, then have a good meal."
"That's fine. What's your address?" Kit gave her his address, Blackberry number, and detailed directions on how to get to the apartment from the university. "I have it. Hold on."
"Kit?" Jessie's voice came over the phone.
"Pretty kitty," he said. "I do hope you don't mind."
"I understand, love," she said sincerely. "And thank you. You're so sweet, thinking of me."
"I always think of you, my love," he said impulsively. "Do you mind terribly cooking for Allison?"
"I'd be happy to. And I'll get to hear her story, too."
"You can get a head start, you know. She seems to be right there in front of you."
Jessie laughed. "Sheila would kill me if I spend all my time in this private room talking to Allison and not out there watching naked guys gyrating around the room."
"What's she doing there, anyway? I thought it was femme's night."
Jessie repeated that to Allison, then there was a long silence. "She, umm, said that they entertain the males who came with the femmes upstairs. So she's working tonight."
"Ah. Alright, I won't hold you away from the fun, pretty kitty. Go out there and ogle to your heart's content."
"There's only one male I like to ogle," she said with shy daring, being a little bold but a bit self-conscious because Allison could hear her.
"Well, get all charged up so I can enjoy it when you come home and do that."
"Kit!" she gasped, then she laughed. "Hold on, this is her phone."
"Mister Vulpan?" Allison's voice called.
"Allison. Be nice to my wife, she's a touch shy."
"I noticed," she said knowingly, which made Kit chuckle. "Tomorrow at six, then?"
"We'll be ready for you. And my wife is an awesome cook," he added.
"I'm looking forward to testing your claim," she said. "Goodbye."
She hung up before he could respond.
Kit chuckled. Now that was an interesting young femme.
Jessie got home around eleven, and much as he predicted, she was very amorous. As much as she said she only had eyes for him, he knew that she was as red-blooded as any other femme, and no femme could look at the fine hunks of male a place like the Top Hat would employ and not get bandy… unless she was some kind of religious zealot or frigid. And Jessie was neither of those. Jessie did indeed give him a wild time, but she wasn't quite so fun when she woke up that morning and had to go to school. She was almost like a little kid, groaning and pulling the pillow over her head, hiding from reality. "Nnnnnoooooo," she whined when the alarm went off. "Ten more minutes!"
"Up and at 'em, tiger!" Kit called from the hallway. "You have school!"
"Nnnoooo!!!!" she moaned groggily, rolling over on her stomach and pulling the pillow tighter over her head.
Kit rolled in and yanked the covers off of her, baring her gorgeous long-haired tail and exquisite backside. She kicked her feet jerkily, then slid halfway up onto her knees with her head still under the pillow, which revealed all kinds of very interesting things to him when her tail flicked up. "Pretty kitty. Love. Either you get up right now, or you're going to miss class for an entirely different reason."
She froze, realized what kind of position she was in, then laughed helplessly under the pillow. "Alright, I'm getting up," she said, putting her tail down and rising up onto her knees, then she looked back at him over her shoulder and winked.
"You little tease," he accused as he went back down the hall. "Breakfast in five minutes!"
As usual, he had breakfast ready for her by the time she was out of the bedroom and at least partially awake. A strong cup of tea and a ham and onion omelet awaited her, and she flopped down in the chair wearing nothing but a robe barely belted in the front, leaving half her considerable cleavage hanging out. "How long will it take you to get all those finances done?" she asked.
"I should be done around three or so," he answered. "What do you want me to pick up for dinner?"
"Let's give her something nice," she said with a yawn. "Grilled salmon with lemon and rosemary, au gratin potatoes, steamed broccoli with cheese sauce, and you can bake an angel food cake for dessert with cinnamon chocolate icing. Oh, and shrimp scampi for an appetizer."
"Oooh, going for the throat, eh?" he chuckled.
She just gave him a grin. "You need to be reminded who feeds you when you're looking at her boobs."
He laughed, leaned over the table, and pulled her robe open. "These are the only boobs I care to look at," he winked.
"Suuure," she teased, slapping his paws away. "And who sent me to go ogle naked males last night?"
"So, you'll let me ogle Allison?"
"Only if you do to me afterwards what I did to you last night when I got home," she said roguishly.
He laughed. "You have a deal, pretty kitty," he told her. "I'll drag you into the bedroom and ravish you the instant we push her out the door."
"I can live with that," she smiled. "And I'm glad you invited her to dinner. Both to keep me from getting jealous, and so I can meet her outside of that place. She was naked when you were talking to her!" she said, slightly scandalized. "Just sitting there on the couch like that was entirely normal!"
"It was for her, love," he told her simply.
"She had her naked butt on a velour couch!" she said. "I was afraid to sit on it! Who knows who sits on that couch and doesn't wipe properly!"
Kit almost fell out of his chair laughing.
He sent her to school on time, and then got to work. He had a lot to do, and since he had a dinner appointment, he had to finish in time to get the shopping done. He got the first parts of it done, and that was where Vil would help him. She placed orders for all the stocks they planned to buy, and as soon as he had the cash, he would wire it to her to cover it. Vil could buy the stocks at a vastly reduced fee, given she could buy them using the company and its buying power. It was a service the company offered to its executives as well, so it wasn't like they were doing anything illegal. Vil was just using her own policy to buy stocks herself, which she would then sell to her brother at cost. After that was done, Kit called the same accounting firm that handled the taxes for the magazine, whom Rick trusted, and he contracted the services of an accountant who would help them do their taxes next year. Kit wanted to hire them now, so he had his spot as a client and his accountant would be waiting for him come January; it was always best to be a client well before the tax season rush.
He was standing outside the bank waiting when it opened, however. The teller was a bit mystified when he presented the bonds, and it took a manager to assure her that the bank did in fact cash them; they were fairly rare. The manager helped him personally after she realized he had fifteen of them. She cashed the bonds, and he scratched two tasks off his list when he bought four certificate of deposits of maturation times between 30 days and six months for a total of $15,000, and opened a money market account with an initial deposit of $10,000. The CDs were basically "wait and see" investments, short-term no-risk investments with low returns that basically gave him money something to do while he waited to see if any better investment opportunities came along, like perhaps some real estate investments when the real estate market bubble burst and real estate values crashed, which would put investors in a prime position to snap up deflated property and hold onto it for when the markets rebounded. He also bought a safe deposit box–they miraculously found an open box for him despite a nearly year-long waiting list–and he put the CD certificates directly into the box. He walked out of the bank with checks and two debit cards for the new account on order, and the balance minus $25,000 in his old account, with plans to keep his original account open to handle day to day expenses and pay bills.
Sometimes it was funny what money could accomplish. Jessie would normally need to be there with him when he opened a new account, but they accommodated him by simply pulling the signature card and Jessie's vital information for their original checking account and using it for the new account, which let him open the joint account without her being with him. And they only did it for him because he intended to keep around $25,000 in their bank, ten in the account and fifteen in the CDs he'd just purchased.
After finishing at the bank, he visited a brokerage and bought two commodities. The first commodity he bought was precious metals; he bought $9,000 worth of gold and platinum. Those were the most stable metals with solid track records of increasing value over time, and were stable investments. The second commodity he bought was treasury bonds, guaranteed government bonds that had a good rate of return if one bought 30-year bonds; though not the best way to invest to make money, their rock-solid guaranteed maturation made them a very solid foundation for any portfolio. Kit bought $20,000 worth of 30-year treasury bonds, which he could also sell before maturity if necessary. Combined with the precious metals, Kit had built a solid foundation for his portfolio, guaranteed money that grow steadily and dependably over time.
The CDs and Treasury bills were the "stability" portion of his investment plan, which would appreciate slowly but steadily over time. He had already started on the "risky" portion with the gold and platinum, though precious metals weren't really as risky… but weren't absolutely guaranteed to appreciate in value. So, Kit classified them as "risk." Since he now had the commodities bought, he returned to the bank and placed the bills and metals vouchers showing his ownership of the metals–those would come later, he demanded it delivered to the bank rather than allow some company hold the metals for him–told the manager the metals would be delivered directly to the bank in two days, and then moved on to the next phase. That was to return home, and wait for Vil to get confirmation to know how much he owed her; often her agents on the floors of the exchanges would delay making a buy if they thought they could get a better price. And her brokers actually came through. They saved Kit nearly four hundred dollars by going on their own instincts and catching several of his stocks at inter-day lows, buying them at their cheapest that day. Sure, waiting to buy a stock after it fell by six cents wasn't much, but when one bought a thousand shares of that stock, those pennies added up fast. When they bought all the stocks Vil had ordered bought, she added it up, and Kit called the bank and arranged the wire transfer of that sum to her, which was $64,427.24.
After adding everything up, and including brokerage fees, safe deposit box rental, and other expenses, he invested a grand total of $117,484.01 of the $117,793.28, which led to a tidy $309.27 net deposit into his regular checking account. He had cut it almost razor-fine, but their planned investment expenditures had come in under the initial capital.
All because of careful planning.
"Is that it, bro?"
"Yeah, that's it," he said, looking at the clock and seeing that he had twenty minutes left before 3:00pm, which was when he had to go buy the food for tonight's dinner. "And I even finished on time."
"You got everything?"
"Yup. Money market account open, safe deposit box bought, CDs bought, T-bonds bought, gold and platinum bought, all our stocks are bought, and I contracted an accountant to help do our taxes next year. It's a nearly sixty percent high risk, forty percent low risk balanced portfolio, at least for now since nearly fifteen percent of the capital is available for reinvestment. You gonna courier those stock certificates to me when you get them?"
"They should be in your hands by Wednesday," she promised. "What's the grand total?"
"I have a little over three hundred dollars left," he said, a bit proudly.
"We nailed it, then," she giggled.
"We did indeed. Well done, sis. I expected nothing less when you're the one helping with the planning."
"Well, you're solvent now, bro. It's about time. Now, what is this dinner you're making? Making something special for Jessie?"
"Kit chuckled. "The truth? I'm inviting over a stripper and prostitute to interview her for a story I'm writing."
Vil gasped, then laughed richly. "You have to be joking!"
"Not a little bit," he answered.
"And Jessie knows about this?"
"She's cooking."
"Dear God, bro, what did you put in her orange juice?"
"Jessie's a little curious about this one," Kit told her. "She works at that sex club Sheila used for my bachelor party. She was a stripper who'd whore out to the clients in the club, their highest-priced femme, and she used the money to get a Master's degree at U.T."
"Okay, now that's unusual."
"And thus why I want to get her story," he finished. "She's a drop dead gorgeous vixen, sis, and I mean gorgeous. Jessie's just a little jealous of her because I'm showing interest in another femme, but my interest is only for the story, not for her. That's why she agreed to invite her over. If I interview her with Jessie here, she'll see she has nothing to be jealous about."
"So she can keep an eye on you," Vil chuckled.
"Which is why I offered the interview over dinner, so Jessie could be here to make sure I behave."
"Clever."
"You didn't raise a fool," he chuckled.
"No, I did not. I'll let you go get your shopping done. I'll have the courier arrive at the magazine around lunchtime Wednesday, so you can take the stocks straight to the safe deposit box."
"I'll be waiting. Vil."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. You just ensured our children get their degrees. I owe you so much for all the help you've given me over the years, I don't know how to ever repay you."
"For you, bro, anything. Anytime. Anywhere. If you would let me, I'd put you in a mansion and give you every penny I got out of Dad's will, but I know you'd never let me. Despite that, you are my family, and I love you, no matter what."
"I love you too, sis."
"Call me after you finish the interview. Tell me how it went."
"You got it. Talk to you tonight."
"Tonight then. Bye bro."
"Bye."
Kit blew out his breath, turning the phone over in his paw. It was done. In one day, he had executed the investment strategy he and Vil had drawn up. With her help and a lot of legwork, he had gotten it all done in only one day. Truth be told, it wasn't that hard. The commodities were easy to buy, as the same brokerage offered to sell both of them to him. The work at the bank wasn't hard because it was all in one place. The most difficult part of it all would have been buying the stocks, but thanks to Vil and her contacts, the brokers she sent out onto the floor of the exchanges to buy those stocks directly, she had saved him a lot of time and a considerable amount of money.
God, he loved his sister.
Allison was a very interesting young femme. In some ways, she reminded Kit of Sheila, Vil, Jessie, and Sam, all rolled into one. She was highly intelligent–to call her a genius wouldn't be far from the mark–but she had a remarkably practical and grounded outlook on life. Her practicality was her most pervasive trait, an almost brutal pragmatism that had led her into the life of a stripper and prostitute; she had seen that stripping and selling her body for sex was the most lucrative profession available to her, more than able to cover her tuition and keep her in a comfortable lifestyle. She could be coquettish and playful, but it was just an act. In ways, her almost detached outlook, a nearly emotionlessness, reminded him of Vil, when she was fully wrapped up in the persona of the Ice Queen. She had a very sensible and clinical approach to things, from eating to conversation, which was much like Sam's well ordered personality. But, she did have a delightfully wicked and understated sense of humor, which reminded him of Sandy. She was as fearless as Sheila, but outside of the club, she was as well-mannered and urbane as Jessie, with exquisite manners and a sense of nearly wholesome propriety. Foxy Firetail the stripper, her stage name, was just an act, a mask she wore, for Allison Gallagher was a very, very different young femme when she was at school.
Jessie was quite surprised to see her stepping in the front door wearing not a miniskirt, not a bustier, but a sensible blouse and a calf-length pleated brown wool skirt. Granted, her blouse and skirt did flatter her formidable figure, but the clothes themselves were very modest.
Kit greeted her, bade her to sit on the couch, and while Jessie cooked for them–he had baked the cake and put the tips and potatoes on before Jessie got home–they talked. He didn't need notes or research to know what he wanted to ask her, so he went through every question that had rolled around in his head since the night he met her. Allison was blunt, direct, and very honest, telling him things that elicited gasps from Jessie in the kitchen, and no doubt caused his pretty kitty's cheek fur to perpetually stand on end. She described her past, coming from a broken home of a father that abandoned them when she was thirteen and an abusive mother, who she left the instant she turned eighteen to let her mother sink herself into her addiction to drugs, and how the pitiful sight of her mother, a strung-out junkie, turned her away from a similar fate. She described graduating from high school and seeing how she would have to be smart, smart and practical, in order to earn the college degree she knew was her ticket to a better life. She talked about how she got into the business, how it worked, and what it was like to be a stripper and a prostitute. She talked about the Top Hat and how she earned almost obscene amounts of money stripping and having sex with the members, money that paid for her schooling, kept her in a small, modest yet well built little house in north Austin she owned outright, allowed her to drive a Lexus when not at school and a cheap used Toyota Camry while at school (so as to hide her money), and had put nearly $65,000 in cold hard cash in the bank at the age of 23, all of it spread through wise and well-reasoned investments that earned her a decent return. She told him about her fears, about her almost monthly medical screenings for AIDS and other diseases, and her many fights with patrons over them using condoms, which was her inviolate rule. "No rubber, no fun," was her motto. She told them with calm reserve about the four times she'd been raped within the Top Hat by irate patrons who refused her condom rule, and how justice was never pursued against the rapists. The worst that happened was that they were barred from the club from then on. After all, how could she cry rape without exposing the club and losing her income? She told them about the lonely life she led, since she couldn't really socialize with anyone at school. How could she risk getting too close to a fellow student and having them find out the truth? The only real friends she had were fellow workers at the Top Hat, who shared her occupation and shared her unique outlook. Only a fellow stripper could understand the dangers and hazards the stripper's life held. But, Allison was much, much smarter than most anyone in the Top Hat, so she felt a little lonely sometimes. The other femmes couldn't really relate to her as they could to each other. They were a little intimidated by her. While they wasted their money on useless toys, clothes, drugs, and other frivolities, Allison had invested the money she didn't use on school and living expenses, and she was sharp. She had built a portfolio as diversified and insightful as the portfolio Kit had assembled that very day.
Kit wrote her summary of her life word for word out of her mouth. "My body earns the money, but my mind does something useful with it."
She described an average day in the life of a high-priced prostitute in great detail to him. As he dictated her words into his laptop, she described going to school and doing her homework like any other student, teaching two entry-level chemistry classes both for a little cover for her true income and to help her in her own field of study, and then putting aside Allison Gallagher, graduate student and student teacher, and becoming Foxy Firetail, stripper and prostitute, performing an internal transformation, going from demure, quiet, femme-next-door femme to a seductive, sophisticated, and extremely sexy vixen who earns upwards of five hundred dollars a night stripping, and a thousand dollars an hour selling her body. She admitted quite calmly that one night, she took home nearly seven thousand dollars, and that was after the Top Hat took its twenty percent of her tips and the one quarter of her prostitution proceeds; that was the success of the Top Hat, she explained, that they took only a small percentage of their male and female workers, which attracted highly attractive workers. By attracting the most attractive workers, they catered to those with lots of money, who spent large amounts of money in their club. Allison told them about one night where there was a party, and the Top Hat took in nearly forty thousand dollars, and that was net. The actual amount of money that changed paws that night was close to two hundred thousand dollars. It was a huge party for a visiting millionaire, thrown by an Austin millionaire, and attended by quite a few other millionaires. Absolutely vast amounts of money were flowing through that club, making it truly a club for the rich to play with beautiful or handsome playthings and satisfy their carnal fantasies.
They took a break for dinner. Allison wasn't entirely impressed with the "fancy" dinner Jessie planned for them, for she was much like Kit, accustomed to eating exotic, rich meals. But her disinterest in the menu changed quickly when she tasted the salmon. "Oh my," she breathed. "Kit, you were not lying. Jessie, you are a fabulous cook!"
"Thank you," Jessie said with a demure smile. "I wanted to make you something really nice, and, well, I'm a cat, so to me nice is seafood."
They enjoyed a sumptuous meal, talking about nothing in particular, and Allison actually laughed when they produced the cake for her. "You'll ruin my figure, and my figure is my living!"
"Not anymore it's not," Kit reminded her.
She actually giggled. "You're right. One big slice, please."
She was startled when she found out that Kit was the one that made the cake. "I'm a lucky femme, Allison. I found a male that can actually cook," Jessie said with a fond smile at Kit. "I had to train him a little bit, but he's turned out rather well."
"I think he did," she agreed.
After dinner, they resumed the interview. Allison continued to describe the daily life of a student by day, hooker by night in frank, explicit detail, and even touched on how her life affected her personality. "I guess you can call me jaded," she said simply. "I don't believe in the innocence of fur any longer. I don't look at males and wonder what if any longer. I sometimes enjoy the sex, but it's just a feeling, a sensation. There's no love anymore, at least not for me," she said soberly, reflectively, swirling wine bought just for her in her glass as they sat on the couch. "Furs lost being fur in a way to me."
"Believe me, that's something I can understand," Kit said, almost grimly, glancing at Jessie. That was almost exactly how he felt about his family.
"Why is that?" she asked.
Jessie looked at him, and just nodded. "I don't know if you know of my family, Allison, but my relationship to my family is just as jaded." He told her about his history with his family, and the towering hatred he had for all of them except his sister and a handful of cousins he either liked or against which harbored no ill will. "So, all that money, and what do I have to show for my family? This," he said, pointing at his damaged ear. "My family isn't a family, Allison. It's a collection of greedy, hedonistic, egotistical foxes who are bound together by their arrogance and their common name."
"And you live like we do?"
"I used to," he admitted. "But my father's will was voided, and that allowed my sister to give me the bonds my mother bought for me when I was born, which I cashed out for a little over a hundred grand. It's the only money I would ever accept from my family, because it came from my mother, and I'd insult her memory not to take it and use it for my family. It's all invested now for the future, so I can provide everything our children will ever need. That money isn't for us, it's for our children. I'll still work and we'll still live off my salary–"
"And mine, when I graduate," Jessie added.
"And Jessie's," Kit nodded. "But the money I inherited from my mother will never be mine. It belongs to our children."
"That's a very beautiful act. You're a very strange couple," she said honestly. "You, born from the rich, who hate the very money most others dream of having themselves. And you, a demure and shy femme who moves with seductive grace because you're jealous of me, afraid I might steal away your husband."
Jessie's cheek fur bloomed in a furious blush.
"And you're a femme who grew up like the rest of us, but also see money through your husband's viewpoint rather than your own."
"I used to, but when I saw Kit's family, I finally understood what he meant. From that moment on, I haven't had a single thought about his family's money. We're better off without it."
"But now you do have money," she noted.
"It's not our money. It's our baby's money," she said, putting her paw on her stomach unconsciously. "We're going to have a baby, Allison. And that money is for our babies, not for us. That's why Kit locked it all away in investments, so there's enough to send all of our children through college when they're old enough. This one won't be the only one," she said, giving Kit a loving smile.
"Congratulations on your blessing," Allison said with a smile and a nod to them.
"Thank you," they said in unison, and they both laughed. "So, we'll live as we always lived, on our salaries, while the money given to us by Kit's mother will let our children go to Harvard if they want to," Jessie finished.
"A very responsible plan."
"We're responsible furs," Kit chuckled. "And we're just like any parents anywhere. We care more about our children than we do ourselves. Besides, it's not like we'll be living out of soup cans. We make a decent living, and I love my job."
"I can only hope I like my next job more than my last one."
"If it's what you want to do, how can you not like it?" Jessie asked simply.
"Hopefully. I was looking at either two to three more years in the Top Hat before I had enough invested to retire, or taking my degree and looking for a real job. I think that a job gotten from a Master's degree would take me maybe eight to ten years before I have enough saved to retire."
"Then what?"
"Honestly? I don't know," she shrugged. "Maybe I'll open a little bar somewhere, or a bed and breakfast. Or maybe I'll let my practical side take over and get involved in the sex trade from the provider side rather than the worker side. I think I'd make a fairly effective madam," she said with a slight smile. "To me, retirement means freedom. Freedom to do whatever I want. Even if I have no idea what to do, to me, it means that I've made it. I can do nothing if I want, sit around, get fat, and watch TV until I keel over from a heart attack. But I'll have earned that right."
They were quiet a long moment, and then Kit sighed and leaned back. "I'd say you have," Kit said. "I'll try to run this in the Friday edition, Allison. I should have the article finished by tomorrow. Tomorrow, I want you to come by here, or stop by my office, and review the article to make sure you agree to it, that I've made it sufficiently vague enough to protect your identity. You'll have total control over it, Allison. If you want anything changed, its gets changed. If you want me to kill the article completely, it dies."
"I can live with that," she said with a nod.
"Just call me when you're ready to come see the article. You still have my number?" She nodded. "Then call when you're ready. If I'm done, I'll let you read it. If I'm not, I'll let you see what I have and give me feedback on if you like what you see."
"Alright. I teach a class at one, so I'll call you around three. Is that alright?"
"That's just fine," he assured her. "I'll be in my office then, but if you don't want anyone there to see you, we can meet wherever you want."
"That works for me. How about John's Pizza? Do you know where that is?"
Kit and Jessie traded a look, then laughed. "We had our second date there," Jessie told her.
"I know where it is. I'll meet you there at three thirty. That sound good?"
"I can make it."
"Do you mind if I come too? I'd like to see the article."
"You're welcome to," Allison told her with a nod. "But I rather expect your husband will show it to you long before I see it."
Jessie laughed. "I guarantee you, he'll retreat into the den the second you leave, and I won't see him again until tomorrow morning," she grinned. "Then he'll hustle me off to school and run to work, and he'll shut himself up in his office and won't come out until he either finishes or it's time to meet you."
"She knows me well," Kit chuckled.
"You really think it's that good of a story?"
"Allison, I've heard more stories than you can imagine, and none of them are as compelling as yours. I just hope I can do it proper justice."
"Well, we'll see if you can," she said, sipping on her wine.
"Just answer me one thing, Allison," Jessie said, quite seriously. "Why did you tell us your story?"
"Because life is a transient thing, Jessie. If I were to die tomorrow, then no one would ever know. And I think I'd like at least one fur to know. Or two, in this case," she smiled. "If I say no to the article, at least you know. And for some reason, that makes me feel… better."
Jessie got up, walked over to the chair in which Allison was sitting, then leaned down and kissed her wordlessly on the cheek. "And I feel better knowing your story," she said seriously.
"Well… thank you, Jessie," she said, with sudden, surprising demureness. "I should get going. I have a lab in the morning, and a class to teach. Tomorrow, three thirty, John's Pizza."
"We'll be there," Kit said with a nod, then he stood up and offered his paw to her. She took it and allowed him to help her to her feet, then he walked her to the door. "Thank you for a wonderful evening, Allison, and the privilege of hearing your story."
She laughed suddenly. "Strange, the way things work. When I first met you, it was your trying to talk to me, with no expectations, no reservations, that made me give you my real name, told you what I did then. You made me feel… important. And that made me want to tell you something I've never told another living soul."
"We're all important, Allison," he told her. "And don't think that just because I've heard your story, I never want to talk to you again. You have my number. You know where we live. When you want to talk, if you want to just come over and hang out, you know where we are."
"And you'll always be welcome here," Jessie said with total sincerity. "Our door is always open for you."
"That's very kind of you," she said with a smile. "But I'm not sure I'll ever accept that offer."
"It's there anyway," she replied calmly.
"I'll keep that in mind," she said. She shook Kit's paw, then Jessie's paw, and then she opened the door. "Good night, and thank you."
"We'll see you tomorrow," Kit told her.
She nodded and walked out. They watched her go, and Kit put his arm around Jessie, watching from the door as she got into her Lexus, and then drove away. "What do you think?" he asked her.
"That's the most fascinating, and messed up, femme I've ever met," she said with sincere pity. "If anyone ever desperately needed a friend, it's her. She's totally alone, and she's shut herself off from everyone. But it's like she just shut that part of herself away, and when she retires, she's going to go looking for it again. Like it's her second chance to find herself, without any responsibilities or distractions."
"That's exactly what she's like. She gave up a part of herself when she sacrificed her morality to pursue her goal of getting a degree. And now, she wants to find herself again now that she doesn't need to hide behind her mask anymore. That's why she opened up to us. She's starting down the road that will lead her back to herself, and she had to admit what she was to herself instead of hiding from it behind a false front."
"Why do we seem to keep coming across femmes like her?" Jessie asked curiously. "First Sheila, now her."
Kit gave her a look, then shook his head soberly. "They're nothing alike. Only on the surface. Underneath, Allison is nothing like Sheila."
"True," she agreed after a moment's thought.
Jessie was absolutely right about Kit. Five minutes after Allison was gone, Kit was in the study, poring over the copious notes he wrote in his laptop. He spent nearly an hour organizing them, arranging them, and then he started on the outline of the article.
He decided immediately that to maintain the impact of the article, certain truths had to remain, but he could protect Allison by being intentionally misleading about where and when he met Allison. He would claim that Allison was merely one of the many furs he met on his six months of working his way across America, meeting her "somewhere between Atlanta and Austin." He would tell her story from the past tense, as if it was already over, and that Allison had been retired from prostitution for some time. He also decided to intentionally change her breed. Allison would transform into a ferret for the article, though still quite attractive; he knew how to describe a femme ferret to make her sexy. He could do all of this because of the disclaimer that appeared with all his Through My Eyes articles; that the stories told may not be real, though the furs that told them most certainly were. That disclaimer gave Kit license to change many relevant facts about Allison to protect her anonymity.
He decided on a title for it: Second Chances.
After he had his planned changes noted in his outline and notes, he began. He worked almost without interruption, stopping only to go to the bathroom and make himself tea. Jessie knew better than to bother him or wait up for him, so she went to bed and left him to his work. He wrote, and wrote, and wrote, telling the story of Allison's life in simple, almost simplistic terms, focusing on the events, but never forgetting about the femme who experienced those events. He highlighted Allison's resolve, her drive, and in a way, the hard choices she made when she abandoned sentimentality for hard practicality, giving particular focus to that fateful moment when she realized that working as a stripper and prostitute was the most economical means of achieving her goal, embracing pragmatism over morality, giving up the dream of love and, while not becoming hard or cold, instead becoming aloof, separating herself from a job she despised, and forced to maintain that illusion to hide that job from the rest of society until it became second nature to her, until she became so wrapped up in protecting herself behind a persona, she lost the real femme inside her for a time… but she also had no regrets. She had survived, even thrived, and her success made her happy in her own way, filled the void caused by the sacrificing of a child's dream. Hers was not a happy story, but it had something of a happy ending in that she had survived her time buried in the dark underside of American society, and had come out of it both emotionally unscarred and financially well off. She had given up the child's dream and the hope of love to pursue her goal, but she had gained independence and freedom in return. To her, that was a fair trade, since now that she was independent and wealthy, she had time to rediscover the child's dream, and find within her the ability to love. Hers was an innocence sacrificed, but a hope maintained, for everything she had done was done with the goal of retiring and having the chance to discover the true femme buried for so long within her, to find out who she was, who she really was.
Gaining a second chance for happiness.
He realized he finished the article, but it was nine pages long, so he went back and tried to edit it. He chopped it up and rewrote it, keeping select passages and paragraphs intact, and again he found it running nearly ten pages, which was way too big to be an article.
All through the night, he worked on it. He redrafted, and redrafted, and redrafted, edited it down, and still could not get it under seven pages without completely destroying the essence of the article. Allison's story was so hard to tell in just a few words. Few words did it a grave injustice.
He drafted it again, and making a few painful choices, he cut it down to five pages. After he got it to five pages, he scrubbed his face and realized that he had to make breakfast for Jessie. It was almost 7:00am. He'd been up all night writing, and aside from an achy back, he was not tired in the slightest. He was too excited, too absorbed in his work to even feel tired. He rushed into the kitchen and put on some eggs, sausage, and toast for Jessie, made he a pot of tea, and then found her already up, droopy-tailed, heading for the bathroom. "Breakfast's on the stove, don't let it burn," he said, hurrying back to the den. He transferred all his work into his laptop, and was on his way to work with just a quick kiss on Jessie's cheek as she dragged herself into the kitchen. He was the first one in, so he left the door unlocked and hurried to his office, then transferred all his work into his workstation and went back to work. He kept rewriting passages and trying to edit, but could not get it under five pages no matter what he did.
The door opened, and Rick looked inside. "Son, it's nearly eleven, and you haven't even come out to get your tea. What's wrong?"
"I… have a problem," he said. "Come in. Close the door."
Rick gave him a curious look, but did what Kit asked. Kit brought up his original article, the unedited one, which was nine pages long, then brought up the edited five page article. "Read these. Then tell me what the hell to do."
Rick took Kit's chair when he vacated it, then he read the article. His expression never changed for over twenty minutes. He then read the edited article, and again, his expression never changed. After nearly forty minutes, he leaned back in the chair, his expression neutral, but his eyes reflective. He then picked up the phone and dialed a number. "Dan. Rick. My next issue is going to run long, just to warn you. It looks like it'll run about forty pages. I just wanted to give you a head's up. Okay. Later, friend." He hung up the phone, and looked at Kit. "We run the long one," he said. "There's no way you can edit that piece, Kit. No way. It's… wow."
"Don't make plans for it yet," Kit said. "I have to get final approval."
"From who?"
He gave Rick a steady look.
"I see. When will you know?"
"This afternoon. I'm meeting Jessie for a late lunch at three thirty. I'll know after it's over."
"Call me the instant you know."
"I will."
Kit was at John's Pizza at two, with his laptop. He sat in a booth and nursed the same glass of tea, exhausted but pleased, just sitting and reading the article over and over, looking for ways to edit it, tweak it, try to do it more justice. He was so absorbed that he was honestly startled when Allison knocked on the table, making him snap his head up. She was wearing a baggy tee shirt and a pair of faded jeans, and to his surprise, a pair of silver rim glasses. "You're early," she noted.
"I am? I am. What time is it?"
"Three fifteen," she answered. "Are we eating?"
"Yeah. Yeah," he said, motioning for her to sit opposite him in the booth. "Here. Read this," he said, turning the laptop towards her. "I'll order us a pizza. What kind do you like?"
"Anything," she said with a negligent wave of her paw.
Kit ordered them a large pepperoni pizza, and waited at the counter for it, almost afraid to go back to the booth. Fortunately, though, he didn't have to wait long, for John's kept pizzas all but ready to bake. Ten minutes later, the pizza was ready, and he carried it back to the booth. Jessie was there now, quiet, waiting patiently as Allison read from his laptop, her expression sober. He received a kiss from Jessie on the muzzle as he set the pizza down, and she reached for a slice. "Have you eaten at all today, my handsome fox?" she asked in a subdued tone.
"I… I don't know," he said, a little wearily.
"Here. Eat!" she commanded, pushing the slice at him.
"I'm not hungry," he said. "Not yet, anyway. I'm too nervous."
She gave him a compassionate look, then tore a piece of cheese off the tip and pushed it slowly and gently against his lips. He nibbled at it, and as if that one taste unleashed a monster inside him, he was suddenly ravenously hungry. She gave him the piece of pizza, and he attacked it like a man dying of hunger. She took a piece herself and ate it with her usual speed, but she kept her eyes on Allison.
After what seemed like an eternity to Kit, Allison finally raised her eyes from the screen of his laptop. She said nothing, for a long, long time. Kit felt his heart was about to leap out of his throat, that he was about to throw up the piece of pizza he'd just eaten, and then she gave a single, eloquent nod.
Then she said something that totally baffled him. "Why a ferret?" she asked.
He was dumbstruck. He tried to find words, which came out as several incoherent rasps, then he laughed helplessly. "Why not?" he asked.
"Can he use it?" Jessie asked, wanting to hear her say it for some reason.
She nodded. "I'm… touched, Kit." She reached down for a piece of pizza, then took a bite out of it.
"Do you want me to make any changes?" he asked.
She shook her head while chewing, swallowed, then said "no. It's fine just as it is."
"Did I do it justice?"
"I think you did. But what is my opinion?" she shrugged. "Here, Jessie. Your turn," she said.
"Good, cause I haven't seen it yet," she said, turning the laptop around and scrolling the article back to the top. Kit and Allison ate in silence, the calm silence of two people content to share a meal and not discuss what was certainly an emotional issue in public. Jessie sniffled once, and then her eyes misted over as she reached the end, closing the screen of the laptop. "Kit, that was beautiful," she whispered. "Stark, but beautiful."
"The story was told," Allison said simply. "And now someone will know."
"They will indeed, Allison," Kit assured her.
Jessie was misty-eyed the rest of the time, as they ate pizza and talked of nothing important at all, as if they were pointedly avoiding the subject of the article. Allison complained about her stupid students, who were taking introductory chemistry either as degree requirements or because they had this strange idea of what chemistry was, and Jessie told her about her English classes. Kit told her about his work, and then Allison abruptly cut them off. "I have to go," she said. "I promised them I'd stay until Friday. I have to go get ready."
"This is my cell phone number," Jessie told her, her eyes grave as she wrote on a napkin. "I want you to call me every day until you leave there. I want to make sure you're okay."
Allison looked at her with her eyes a mystery, then took the napkin and nodded silently. "I don't get off work until late."
"Then wake me up," Jessie said immediately. "Knowing you're okay is going to let me go back to sleep that much happier."
"I will. I promise."
"Don't be a stranger, Allison," Kit told her. "You have friends if you want them."
She gave both of them a long, emotionless look, then nodded to them, got up, and left without a word. Kit blew out his breath, and Jessie put her paw on his shoulder. "Are you alright, my handsome fox?"
"I'm very, very tired," he said, digging his phone out and calling Rick. "But I have more to do. Rick, it's Kit."
"What's the word?" he asked.
"The word is yes. As is."
"Thank God," he said. "I don't think it needs anything, son. You did a fantastic job. I'll just spellcheck it and work it in at nine pages."
"I hope it's worth the extra cost."
"Son, between this and Barry's interview of the Austin election commissioner, yes, it's worth it," he said bluntly. "Go home, son. When you left here, you couldn't walk straight. Go home and get some sleep. You deserve it."
"I can't yet," he said. "I have to come back to the office. I made a promise, Rick. I have to wipe all my notes off my workstation. The article will be all there is."
"Alright, but don't push it. Come in, clean up, and then go home."
"Alright, Rick. I'm on the way in." He disconnected the call, and looked to Jessie. "Go on home, love. I'll be along as soon as I'm done."
"Do you want me to do that at home, too?"
"No, I'll get it. I'm going to keep one copy of my notes. I'll burn it on a DVD, encrypt it, and hide it somewhere."
"Okay. I'll be waiting for you at home, my handsome fox. Please come home soon."
"Believe me, I will," he said with a yawn. "I am beyond tired."