Outsource@Home—Pt. 01

I couldn't fucking believe it. I wanted to throw something. I wanted to tip over his desk and leap over it and claw his eyes out. I wanted to scream until I was hoarse while strangling the smug sonofabitch for telling me what a lucky little girl I was to have them looking out for me. I wanted to run through the O@H offices scattering flash-bangs and thermite daisies. I wanted to be a berserker.

Instead, I closed my eyes, put my feet flat on the floor and my hands on my thighs, and started relaxing: feet, ankles, calves, quads, pelvis, abdomen, shoulders, deltoids, neck, biceps, forearms, hands, fingers...breathe in hold it breathe out lorem, breathe in hold it breathe out ipsum, breathe in hold it breathe out dolor... breathe in hold it breathe out sit... breathe in hold it breathe out amet... rinse and repeat. Harry fidgeted, and after about 90 seconds tried to interrupt.

"I thought you'd be pleased by the news." I didn't respond, tried not to process his words. I wasn't ready yet. He knew what I was doing, he'd had the same training. He wisely decided to stop trying to break my focus. After five minutes or so, I trusted myself to speak.

"I'm sure y'all meant well, had nothing but the best of intentions toward national security...and me...but it better never happen again. You know, I've given six years to this..." I waved vaguely around. "and never held back. I even let myself get raped, just to protect the goddam op." I took a deep breath in a feeble attempt to calm back down. "Even though I could have killed the smelly sonofabitch while he was getting his dick out of his pants.

"If I ever catch so much as a whiff of surveillance around Mark or me, Harry, I'll pull the plug. I'm sure that the Times and Washington Post and Rolling Stone and PBS and Fox News and HuffPo and Breitbart would be eager to learn about the fun and games O@H has been playing, and where." Harry started to object, but I waved him quiet.

"I know what I signed, I know our handlers don't feel particularly constrained by such niceties as constitutional guarantees or ethics or common decency. I know that the best I could hope for would be a long stay at some no-star government resort. But prison, or worse, would be better than trying to live knowing that our every move was being watched, recorded, stored away."

I had to get out before I lost it completely. Digging my nails into my palms for distraction, I stood quickly and headed for the door. He stood and started around the desk. "Kat—" I slammed the door in his face. Ignoring the startled looks from the half-dozen people at their desks, I marched outside and headed for my car.

I got in, looked around, and was a little disappointed that Harry hadn't followed me. I was pretty sure I'd just committed on-the-job seppuku, but didn't really give a shit. Yeah, I loved my job, but I hated being treated like a stupid, helpless little girl. Was it possible I might even love Mark more than the job? God, where did that come from? That thought scared the hell out of me. I'll think about that tomorrow.

I sat in the car for half an hour, made three or four false starts at driving off, then finally admitted that I'd really screwed the pooch, stepped way over the line. They weren't willy-nilly poking into my private life, they were trying to see if Mark was a threat to national security. They didn't have much choice, they really believed that shit about national security being their whole raison d'être.

I got out of the car, went back into the building, and marched up to Harry's office door—it was open again—without bothering to stop at his admin's desk. Just as she raised her arm and started to say something, Harry waved me in. "Come on in, Kat, and close the door." I was so upset I couldn't figure out how to start.

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, finally something came out. "I'm sorry I—"

"No worries, Kat. I understood why you were so unhappy—no, not unhappy, supremely pissed. I probably would be, too. But that was a pretty scary threat you made. If I'd thought you really would do it, you wouldn't have made it out of the building." I wasn't surprised that was his reaction, but I was surprised that he'd tell me.

"I knew it was your anger talking. I was pretty sure you'd regret letting go like that, I just didn't think it would happen so quickly. I find that encouraging. Why don't you take the next couple of days off? Maybe Netflix and chill." He had the good grace to grin.

Mark switched from his long game to the end game. I was back on regular field rotation, but the ops were brief and uneventful; I wasn't sure whether that was by chance or by design. He called me every few days, sometimes to make or firm up plans for a night out, sometimes just to chat. Pretty soon it was every other day, then every day. Our nights out got more frequent, then nights out started turning into nights staying in at his place or mine, for a home-cooked meal (or ordered in) and necking on the couch, with or without a movie on the tube.

By April the necking had progressed from deep kissing—our two Brit liaisons took great delight in asking me "How goes the snogging, Luv?"—to what was once euphemistically called "heavy petting." Even though I struggled with my unspoken insecurity and fear of letting myself become vulnerable, Mark's the one who stepped on the brakes.

As our make-out sessions grew more heated, he shifted us down from two steps forward-one step back to just marching in place. I finally called him on it when he took his hands out from under my bra, reached around, and refastened it. "It's not that I don't want you, Kat, I just don't want us to get carried away and then have to live with regrets. When we're ready to commit to something long-term, we can...explore further."

I was ready for him to carry me into the bedroom so we could start those further explorations, but instead he buttoned up my blouse, kissed me tenderly, and said goodnight. I was beginning to wonder which team he played for.

A couple of weeks later he proposed, not on one knee in a candlelit posh restaurant, but reaching across the table to take my hand at a Starbucks on a Saturday afternoon. "I love you, Kat, I pretty much have since the first time I saw you. Will you marry me?"

If he'd asked me a month earlier I'm not sure what I would have said, but his non-standard proposal was just right. I took a minute or so to make sure I really understood what he had said, then matched his understated proposal: instead of jumping up and screaming "Yes, yes, yes!" I just put my other hand on his. "I'd love to, Mark."

He didn't even have a ring, so we went to a jewelry store in the mall. I said I didn't need a diamond, but Mark just grinned. "No, but I need you to wear one." I didn't want something flashy, so I chose a half-carat solitaire diamond on a simple yellow gold band. He tried to talk me into at least a 1-carat stone, but I stood my ground.

"I'm going to be your wife, Mark, not a trophy. We don't have to spend a lot of money to impress people, we just want to show our love and commitment." When he saw I wasn't going to cave, he held up his hands in surrender and once again flashed that grin that started me down this garden path so many months ago.

"I doubt if I could convince anyone that you argued for a cheaper—excuse me, less expensive—ring, so you win." It took them half an hour to correct the size and give the ring a final buff and cleaning. Mark slipped it on my finger, then we hugged each other for a long while. The flood of dopamine and endorphins almost drowned out the little voice whispering "I hope you're doing the right thing."

Three months later we were married on the lawn of Hollins House near Santa Cruz, overlooking Pasatiempo Golf Course and Monterey Bay. Mark's bachelor blowout and my bachelorette party the weekend before were fairly sedate affairs—nice dinner, standup comedians, a somewhat raunchy roast, no strippers, nobody threw up. Heather was disgusted.

"When do you make your final vow as a Sister of Perpetual Purity? Will you have to wear a habit?" She still managed to tell a few really embarrassing stories about me at the roast.

Neither of us was particularly religious, but Mark wanted a semi-traditional wedding, with white gown and flower girl and attendants and an officiant with a better CV than a $19.95 certificate of online ordination. Jerry Brown was a freelance "marriage facilitator" who left his calling as a Jesuit priest and answered the call to marry a Sister of Divine Mercy.

Okay, okay, a former Sister of Divine Mercy.

Mark suggested we write our own vows, which involved a bit of negotiation. After chewing on phrases like "to love, cherish, and obey" and "forsaking all others" and "according to God's holy ordinance," he proposed the following:

With all my heart, I take you to be my lifelong lover, companion, and friend, your ally in conflict, your greatest fan. I will be your comrade in adventure, your comfort in disappointment, your accomplice in mischief, your strength in times of need, your haven of rest. I will listen with understanding, and trust you completely, all the days of my life

I read it with a few misgivings, but had already decided to trust him with my heart, so I wrote off the misgivings as pre-wedding jitters and just added a few commas. When we gave a copy to Jerry at the rehearsal, he raised his eyebrows and gave me a curious look, but didn't say anything. The little voice started to say "See—" but I told it to STFU, I knew what I was doing.

Heather was my bridesmaid. She, Marie, and Sandy flew up from Texas. The three of them, plus a couple of dozen O@H folks, made up my contingent of the wedding party. Something over a hundred of Mark's friends, acquaintances, family, and colleagues came to watch him give up his bachelorhood. The reception was inside, with another nice dinner and a live band; no stinking DJ for Mark Hopkins, no sirree Bob!

We didn't honeymoon in Aruba or Fiji or Paris, we drove 45 miles around Monterey Bay to the venerable-but-gorgeous La Playa Hotel in Carmel for five days of divine debauchery. No, we didn't spend all our time in our room; we drove down to Point Lobos and Big Sur and brunched at Nepenthe, toured Carmel Mission, paid our 10 bucks to cruise the 17-mile drive and gawk at golfers and gated mansions, strolled through downtown "Carmel by the Sea" (How precious!) and snickered at the cutesy-poo and artsy-fartsy shops, had some superb clam chowder and disappointing calamari... quintessential tourist stuff.

Which is not to say we didn't also test the static and dynamic load limits of the king-sized bed in our premier ocean-view room. At Mark's insistence, we had put off getting off until our wedding night, but then it was Katy bar the door. He didn't seem to mind that I was woefully inexperienced; he more than made up for it, making major progress in broadening my sexual horizons. I quickly lost count of how many times he rang my chimes, but was pleased to note that he also responded approvingly to my ministrations, sometimes quite explosively.

============

Part 5

A bottle of Laphroaig and a blow job.

THE FINAL DAY of our idyllic interlude was tarnished by a disquieting event that planted the first seeds of doubt about Mark. We were taking an early-morning walk along Scenic Road beside Carmel Beach, and had decided to turn around and head back to the hotel for our last breakfast there. As we stopped, I spied a couple wearing scuba gear and swim fins walking into the water.

He was well over six feet, she was over a foot shorter. The scuba tanks seemed to be a pretty heavy load for her and she was having trouble lifting her feet high enough to walk with the fins. He got quite a bit ahead; when the water was just over his knees a wave started curling in front of him. Without looking back, he shallow-dived through it and started slowly swimming out.

The wave was only a three- or four-footer, but she was busy adjusting her mouthpiece and didn't see it coming. It broke on top of her and knocked her to her knees. She shook her head and tried to stand, but was obviously shaken and tired. Just as she tried again to get to her feet, her mouthpiece dangling loose, a much larger wave broke on top of her. It not only knocked her back down, it tumbled her in the surf and left her lying flat.

She was much slower getting to her feet, while another, even larger wave was bearing down. I turned to Mark. "Come on, we've got to help her!" But Mark was staring at his phone, checking his email or some damn thing. He looked up, puzzled.

"What...Who?" He had no idea what I was talking about. I pointed frantically, but the woman had just been pummeled by yet another wave and wasn't visible. "What are you talking about?"

There was no time. The spume had cleared and I could see her now, starting to be carried out by the backwash. Her asshole buddy still hadn't looked back. I yelled to Mark as I started running. "Call 911!"

The road was about 20 feet above the beach, the woman around 200 feet away. The first 40 feet or so was fairly level through a line of Monterey cypress, followed by a steep slope of another 40 feet or so armored against wave action with rip-rap (large rocks and boulders). Just as I reached the edge of the rocks I heard a man's shout.

"Rhonda, call 911!" A man who looked to be in his 60s wearing a dark suit and cowboy boots was leaping, almost running from rock to rock down the slope. He was yelling back at his wife standing on the road; she appeared to be about the same age, also dressed nicely in a light blue dress. I figured they were on their way to or from church.

Thankful I was wearing slacks, I started rock jumping myself, somewhat more cautiously than the fellow had been. Despite the fact that his slick-soled boots were ill-suited for negotiating a boulder field—at any speed, let alone full on—he reached the sand and started running toward the woman when I was just half-way down. I concentrated on my footing until I reached the bottom, then started my own rescue dash.

He ran into the water without hesitating. Bye-bye nice suit and manly footwear. By the time he reached her I was at the water's edge and hurried out to join him. We each took her by an upper arm and dragged her out of the water ahead of the incoming wave until we were 50 feet or so up the beach.

This was much like one of our rescue exercises, so I had a mental checklist. "I'll clear her mouth and air passages, you get her out of the scuba gear." He seemed to be glad to have directions and set to work on the harness while I turned her head and cleared her tongue. We got her out of the scuba gear and I started CPR.

"You've done this before." His assumptions and trust embarrassed me. I answered between breaths without looking at him.

"No, just an amateur who took CPR at the Red Cross." I wasn't exactly honest about where I learned nor the annual refresher I had to take. I sneaked a look and he gave me one of those you're-so-full-of-shit-your-eyes-are-brown looks, but the twinkle in his eyes belied any rebuke.

We heard the sirens and both breathed a sigh of relief. She had a faint pulse but hadn't yet started breathing. Just as we heard the paramedics slam the ambulance doors she coughed; I quickly turned her head aside again and she vomited a nasty pudding of coffee, scrambled eggs, mimosa, and seawater. Two paramedics sprinted across the sand lugging a responder kit and backboard.

I gave them a quick summary of what happened and her response, then the other Samaritan and I stepped back, turning the still-coughing young lady over to the pros. Just then two Johnny-come-latelys strolled up from opposite directions, Mark and the woman's asshole companion.

"What the hell's going on here? What did you do to her?" The asshole apparently had decided to bluster his way out of abandoning his friend. I wasn't going to let him get away with it.

"Thanks to your dereliction of duty, this young lady would have drowned if it weren't for the heroic actions of this gentleman." I made a grand gesture to my fellow rescuer.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Now he was truly pissed. "What do you mean, drowned? She had tanks, you dipshit!" Now I was truly pissed.

"That's why she almost drowned, asshole." Unlike him, I was speaking almost softly. One of the paramedics failed to completely stifle a chuckle. "She was adjusting her mouthpiece when that wave you cleared knocked it out of her mouth and decked her. Those tanks are too heavy for her, and you know it." I had to get a grip before I clocked him in front of witnesses.

"Before she could get back on her feet, that next big one smashed her flat and started rolling her around. Two more big ones beat her up some more and started dragging her out. She had stopped struggling. If you had done your job right and kept track of her, this wouldn't have happened. But you never looked back until it was too late." He wasn't going to give up easily.

"You don't even know her. She's an experienced diver, this could happen to anyone. You're way out of line here."

What a dickhead! "I'm not sure who you expect to believe that. If she's so experienced, why is she using fins and tanks and a mouthpiece way too big for her? Face it: You talked her into using some of your hand-me-down gear without proper training, then failed to accompany her until she was safely underway. You fucking near killed her."

I knew I was getting too hot, but had to make one final point. "As far as I'm concerned, that's criminal negligence—at a minimum." By this time my fellow rescuer's wife had walked down from the road. When she gasped at my outburst, he took her hand and flashed an approving smile at me, but said nothing.

The paramedics had put on an oxygen mask and strapped her to the backboard. The one who had chuckled took out a camera and shot some pictures of her, the tanks, flippers, the dickhead, and a couple of overall shots of the beach and waves. He turned to her faithless companion, who still had his gear on, neither chuckling nor smiling now. "I've radioed the police, they're on their way. They'll want to talk with you, so you'll have to stay here until they arrive. Do you have any ID?"

Mr. Tall and Belligerent wasn't looking well. He shook his head and mumbled something about in his car.

"I'm sure the officers will be happy to accompany you back to your vehicle, sir. They might even help you carry her diving gear. We're taking the young lady to Community Hospital. The officers can give you directions." As they stooped to pick up the backboard, I was startled to hear Mark speak up.

"I'll help him carry it. I don't see why it's necessary to involve the police. She seems to be okay now, and I'm sure he meant no harm." The paramedic turned to him with a deceptively bland look; his voice took on a more officious tone.

"That's very generous of you, sir, but an incident report must be filed. They need to talk with all witnesses, including you." He turned to me. "They'll want to talk with you and your—"

Mark hastily interrupted. "Husband. And—"

"Now we have to get her to the ER." He and the other paramedic, who hadn't said anything but looked somewhere between disgusted and outraged, picked up the backboard and headed back to the ambulance.

We waited in awkward silence until the police arrived, then each of us described what we had seen. I tried to keep my comments neutral, but I suspect my disapproval was apparent to the officers as they took notes and wrote down our names, street address, phone numbers, and email addresses. They said we might be contacted again, thanked us, and left.