Chapter 17
The Catholic religious wedding ceremony for Cathy Black Thorn and David Light Wind started at noon. It was a traditional Catholic service and lasted for almost an hour before they exchanged their vows. The Catholic priest provided a nice service in which he blessed their marriage. To tell the truth, Lucy had found it rather boring. She also felt that the bride wasn't given the kind of attention that most women sought in the wedding ceremony.
At two, the bride and groom met at their future home to perform the Native American wedding ceremony. Lucy, although not a member of the bride's or groom's family, was allowed to attend by joining the tribal elders who would watch. It was their role to give the young couple advice once they were married.
It started with the groom taking a seat on the west side of the living room in their new house. His mother sat beside him while the rest of his relatives sat against the north wall of the house. The bride came in carrying a basket that was half full of corn mush. She was followed by Dale and William. William carried a small wedding jug that contained water. The bride set the basket in front of the groom before taking a seat beside him. Dale sat beside her and then accepted the jug of water from William.
At that point, William's job in the ceremony was over. After all, it was a very minor role in the ceremony usually given to an apprentice so that he could learn from watching the proceedings. He went over to where Lucy was seated with the tribal elders. He took a seat beside her and held her hand. Every eye in the room had watched him join the elders. His presence at the wedding was considered a great honor for the bride's family.
The bride and groom washed their hands from the jug of water with Dale pouring the water over the groom's hands first and then the bride's. In a whisper, William explained to Lucy that washing their hands symbolized cleansing their minds, bodies, and spirits. It was important to enter into the union spiritually clean.
Dale then blessed the corn mush by sprinkling corn pollen to the four directions. The bride and groom then ate of the corn mush. It was messy since they used their hands. Although the bride and groom tried to look serious, their eyes smiled at the mess they made. William, whispering so that only Lucy could hear, explained that eating together was representative of their spiritual matrimonial union. He pointed out that the corn mush was a mixture of white and yellow corn symbolizing the male and female. Since they entered into the marriage as equals, there was an equal amount of each color corn.
The bride's family then brought out small servings of food on little plates. They served the bride and groom first and then served the family of the groom. While the food was served, the two families formally greeted each other. It was the first official notice that the families made of each other.
The tribal elders took turns explaining the secrets to marital happiness. Most of the advice from the men was to the groom suggesting that he always listen to the wife. William suggested that each morning they spend a minute to remember the feelings that motivated them to get married. Lucy suggested that each night they spend a minute to think about what they had done that day to let the other know that they were loved. The rest of the elders had nodded their heads at the wisdom imparted to the young couple by William and Lucy.
Once the elders had finished giving their advice and the food on the small plates had been consumed, the wedding party moved outdoors where friends were gathered to celebrate. The real meal was laid out for all to enjoy. There was music and dancing to go along with the food. William and Lucy had taken the opportunity to talk to everyone at the wedding.
It was after midnight when William and Lucy finally reached their home. William sat down on the couch in the living room of the suite he shared with Lucy. He yawned with a low roar while stretching his arms over his head.
Lucy smiled at him and asked, "Did you have a good time?"
"Yes, I did," William said.
"The bride was lovely," Lucy said.
"Contrary to expectations, the groom didn't have a club foot," William said.
Lucy laughed and said, "Patrick was so funny."
"Patrick was so proud of his sister," William said. He had caught Patrick explaining to someone that William had attended just because his sister was special. It pleased him that the young man thought well of his family.
"The family was proud that you attended the wedding," Lucy said. She had heard that from many sources during the party. John Black Thorn had thanked William several times for participating in the ceremony.
"Maybe I'll get invited to a party or two in the near future," William said.
"I hope so. I had such a good time," Lucy said. She found that although she knew very few members of the tribe, she liked being around them. There was a strange sort of laid back approach to life that was comforting. There was also a quiet confidence that they could handle all that life had to throw at them. She suspected that confidence had a lot to do with William's destruction of the curse.
"Would you like to throw a party here?" William asked.
"Yes, I would," Lucy said. There had been plans to have a house warming party at the end of the previous summer, but those plans had been delayed when William had lost his ability to see the future. Lucy was pleased to hear that he had recovered enough to consider having a party at the house.
"Let's set one up for the middle of May. We'll have the kids I taught in school come and they can bring their families. They are all seniors, so we could call it a kind of graduation party."
"That's an interesting idea," Lucy said trying to figure out how many people would attend. She figured that there were twenty-five students and that each student was probably in a family of four or five. That would make the guest list to be about a hundred and twenty-five people. She added another twenty five assuming that some of the students or their families would bring along a boyfriend or girlfriend. Then she thought about the students of the first semester and doubled the figure. She smiled and said "We will have a chance to see how good the first floor is for parties."
William held out his arms for Lucy. She slid into his lap while he said, "I really liked your advice for the bride and groom."
"I was really surprised by your advice," Lucy said. She kissed him on the cheek. The idea that he spent a minute every morning remembering why he married her was very special.
"Why?" William asked surprised by her admission.
"I was thinking of saying something stupid about not letting the man know just how much you controlled his life when you said that. I had to come up with something real fast so that I wouldn't look stupid," Lucy said.
"Does that mean that you don't take a minute every night to think about how you let me know that I'm loved?" William asked pretending to be hurt.
"You know better than that," Lucy said with a smile and a short little love tap on his arm. She grinned and said, "I didn't tell them that every day at noon that I think about how I can make the rest of your day miserable."
"Ah that explains why mornings are always better than afternoons around here," William said with a laugh while running his hand across her back.
"I hope you aren't too tired for me to ruin your night. I've got plans that require nudity, groping, and lots of moaning," Lucy said.
"I'm never too tired for that," William said. He stood up with her in his arms and carried Lucy into the bedroom.
William sat at the breakfast table eating a simple meal of scrambled eggs and toast. Peter watched him eat the meal. He had offered Eggs Benedict, but William had chosen plain scrambled eggs. William over at Peter and asked, "What's the matter?"
"Nothing," Peter said.
"Lucy and I may have a small challenge for you coming up," William said. He picked up a slice of toast and slathered some strawberry jam on it. Judging by the container, it wasn't the cheap kind from the store that he liked so much.
"Let me guess. You want me to prepare some masterpiece that you can mock in your typical fashion," Peter said.
"No, I can always do that," William replied with a grin.
Raising an eyebrow at the offhand way in which William had replied, Peter asked, "So what is this challenge?"
"Buffet for two hundred and fifty guests or so," William answered watching Peter out of the corner of his eye.
"Buffet?" Peter said with a frown. As far as he was concerned, that was assembly line cooking. The tricky part was coming up with a menu that wouldn't kill the cooking staff. There were standard menus that would serve the purpose perfectly well.
"Yes, but not that same old kind of food that I always get when I attend one of those fancy charity events. I'm not really impressed by the kind of stuff that is normally served at those kinds of things. I mean, boiled shrimp, egg rolls, those mini Russian thing-a-ma- jobs, and filets of chicken that are breaded and smothered in some weird sauce just isn't going to cut it," William said. The look of horror on Peter's face was almost worth charging admission.
Peter stared at William for a minute trying to decide if he was serious. There was only one conclusion  William was serious. He frowned and said, "It'll take some time to come up with a menu."
"You've got plenty of time. Oh, don't include any of those awful little cheese blitzes. I hate them," William said. About to take a bite out of his toast, he paused and added, "Don't include any of those wraps. That flat bread tastes like cardboard. If I wanted to eat cardboard, I'd go out and buy a hamburger and eat the box it came in."
"Any other restrictions?" Peter asked. In a half dozen sentences William had shot down every menu item that had come to mind.
"None that I can think of at the moment," William answered with a smile. He took a bite out of the piece of toast.
"I'm sure you'll reject half of my suggestions," Peter said with a sigh. Marguerite had warned him that working for a Carter would be a challenge and he hadn't believed her. Of course, all of the negatives were offset by the fact that he had far more freedom than most chefs could ever achieve in their career.
After swallowing his food, William said, "Probably. After all, you did try to pawn off a dish stolen from the Swiss as being Mongolian."
Lucy laughed at the sour expression that came over Peter's face. She said, "Don't look so glum, Peter. This is a real challenge and one that I'm sure you'll succeed in meeting."
Shaking his head, William said, "You have to watch these chefs with both eyes open. They're tricky little fellers."
Peter headed off to the kitchen before he had a chance to say something that he would regret. Even before he reached the door, his mind was hard at work trying to come up with an appropriate buffet meal for the party. He wondered if it was possible to include a couple of cooking stations.
Lucy said, "I'm not sure that he's convinced that you are teasing him."
"He cooked for a year at my parent's home. I'm sure that Daddy Ed was even worse," William said with a grin.
"If you recall, he didn't come out of the kitchen once when your father was here," Lucy said with a laugh.
"True," William said. He looked over at the door and saw that Colt was standing there waiting for them to finish talking. He asked, "What's up, Colt?"
Colt entered the room and looked around for a minute. Taking a deep breath, he answered, "We're going to get married."
"You and me? Isn't that rather sudden?" William asked with a grin. Lucy chirped out a laugh that almost strangled her.
"No. Rock and I are going to marry Nicole and Natalie. We're going to need a few days off so we can get hitched," Colt answered.
"It's about time and you'll need more than a few days off if you are going to do it properly," William said. He shoveled the last forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth.
"You can say that again," Lucy said. She waited for William to repeat himself, but he didn't.
"It won't take more than a day or two to get married," Colt said with a frown.
"That won't do at all," Lucy said.
Shaking his head, William asked, "We'll need to know when you are planning on having the ceremony. Of course, we'll cover all of the expenses. Have you given any thought about where you want to go on your honeymoon?"
"You don't have to do that," Colt said holding up his hands.
"Of course we don't, but we want to," Lucy said giving him a nod of her head.
"Right. Just let us know where you would like to get married and how many guests you'll have. I'll put Barbara to work on it," William said.
"I'm serious; you don't have to do that. Rock and I were thinking about maybe just driving up to Las Vegas," Colt said. When they had discussed eloping to Las Vegas they hadn't considered that William would insist on making it a much bigger affair.
"Nonsense," William said. He looked over at Lucy and asked, "Do you think that Natalie and Nicole would be happy getting married by an Elvis impersonator?"
"Probably for about three days and then they'd get pissed," Lucy said.
"That answers that," William said looking over at Colt.
Colt hadn't thought about how the women would feel about a Las Vegas ceremony after the fact. He looked down at the floor and said, "I'll need to talk to Rock about this."
"You'll probably need to talk to Natalie and Nicole as well," Lucy said.
Colt shuffled out of the room. Watching him leave, William said, "He doesn't seem all that excited about having a big wedding."
"The wedding isn't for the men; it's for the women," Lucy said pursing her lips. She wondered what kind of trouble Rock and Colt were headed towards with their idea of eloping.
Laughing at a private joke, William and Lucy sat down at the conference table. Barbara watched the couple with a frown. Licking her lips, she said, "I've got a candidate here for the research assistant position."
"Bring her in," William said.
"There is something that you might want to know before I bring her in," Barbara said looking a little worried. Although everyone else had already interviewed the candidate, she wasn't sure about her suitability for the job.
"What?" Lucy asked. She knew that another failure to get a competent research assistant would drive William crazy. He had been very upset about the situation with Vera. The woman had started off so promising.
"She's not exactly young," Barbara answered after clearing her throat. Age wasn't supposed to be an issue when hiring someone, but the need for long term stability in the workforce was important to most employers. It cost money and time to find a competent employee. It was a waste of money if they had no intention of staying for long. She had hoped to find someone younger who would work with William for years.
"How old is she?" William asked looking over at Lucy in confusion. He wondered what age had to do with anything.
"Sixty," Barbara answered.
"At least she isn't a hundred," Lucy said.
"She'll probably want to retire in two or three years," Barbara said.
"So?" William asked.
"I'm pretty sure that you don't want to go through this process again," Barbara said.
Waving off that concern, William asked, "Is she competent? Does she know how to use the research tools that we have here?"
"She's very competent. For the past twenty years, she was a research assistant for a very well known author who passed away last year. He wrote those massive historical novels. Well, she did all of the research for him," Barbara answered. She hadn't believed it when the resume had crossed her desk and had double checked every reference. She had gone so far as to call the author's widow to get a character reference. Considering that she had worked with the man for such a long time, the widow had said that there had never been a harsh word exchanged with the woman.
"Bring her in," William said impatiently. All he wanted to do was to work on his research and the lack of an assistant to track down the data that he needed was driving him crazy.
"Okay," Barbara said afraid that she was allowing another mistake to occur.
The woman who entered the room looked older than sixty. In fact, she looked closer to eighty than sixty. She sat down at the table across from William and Lucy without the typical nervousness of the average job applicant. She had come to the interview more out of curiosity about William than an expectation of getting a job.
The fact was that she seriously doubted that she would get the job. Everything that she had been able to learn about William was that he hired only the best, but everyone that worked for him was relatively young. If she were to get the job, she'd be more than twenty years older than the next oldest person. Her age was working against her and she had come to accept that.
William studied the woman for a moment and then said, "I need economic figures concerning various economic sectors. One of those sectors is the sex industry. Do you have a problem with that?"
The woman looked across the table for a second at William. Deciding that she had nothing to lose, she answered, "Honey, the average prostitute in Arizona charged a twenty dollar gold piece for a night back in 1883. The price in silver towns was significantly higher. At that time, a twenty dollar gold piece would purchase anywhere from four to twenty acres of good farm land. At the current price of land, that same property would cost anywhere from sixteen thousand to forty thousand dollars. Today a prostitute will charge between two hundred dollars and three thousand dollars for a full night. I would suggest that prostitution as an economic sector has not kept up with the cost of living as well as other economic sectors.
"The kinds of services provided by prostitutes have not changed much in a hundred and fifty years. They still provide blow jobs, straight sex, and anal sex with about the same statistical distribution as was common in the past. Women have always posed to have their images captured for posterity. Since cameras were a lot rarer in those days, it was more common for them to pose for an artist, but there are lots of sexually explicit photographs remaining from as early as the 1860's. The sex industry, in terms of services provided, has not changed all that much despite advances in technologies. The economics of the industry has changed over time.
"Today, there are often more middlemen taking money in the chain between service provider and customer. While pimps and madams have always been involved in the sex trade, there have been new roles open up in modern times. There is a large distribution network of sexually explicit material today that didn't exist back then. It has become a real industry rather than a back alley activity.
"Every town of over eight thousand people can be assured of having at least one place where sex for money is available. There are brothels, massage parlors, and escort services. Even small towns have women who will accept money to provide sexual services. The sex trade is pervasive throughout our society," the woman answered. She sat back and watched William's reaction.
William studied her thoughtfully. He leaned forward and asked, "How difficult would it be to establish how much of a family income is spent in the sex industry based on the economic income of the primary wage earner?"
The woman chewed her lower lip for a second while thinking about how she would go about acquiring the information her requested. She answered, "That's a tough one, Honey. I fear that no government agency has really studied that aspect of the sex industry. Even the university types shy away from that subject area. Most studies are from the supply side of the industry. They look at how many sex shops, prostitutes, and video rental places there are in a locale while estimating how much money they make. As far as I know, there hasn't been a major study that has addressed the demand side of the equation."
William frowned at the answer although he believed that she was probably accurate in her assessment. He glanced over at Lucy and found that she was smiling at him. Lucy was enjoying this discussion too much and he wasn't sure why. He asked, "What would be required to find out that information?"
"Fund a study of it," the woman answered as if it was obvious what he would have to do.
"How long would it take to get the data I want?" William asked thinking that she at least had a way of getting the information that he wanted.
"Honey, depending on the accuracy of the answer, it could take anywhere from a year to twenty years," she answered without hesitation.
"Barbara, do you think that you could ask Dave to come here?" William asked turning to look at Barbara. He decided that Dave could probably put together a poll that would give reasonable estimates in relatively good time. He turned back to the elderly woman and was about to ask her another question when Lucy tapped him on the shoulder. Now that he was actually making some progress on getting the information that he wanted, the interruption was a little disconcerting. He turned to look at her and asked, "What?"
"You've gone into work mode. You might want to hire her before you start having her work for you," Lucy said with a smile to soften the effect of her words.
William blushed and nodded his head. He was about to make the offer when he realized that he hadn't even asked for the woman's name. He asked, "What is your name?"
It was Barbara's turn to blush and she answered, "William, this is Victoria Clemmons. Victoria, this is William and Lucy Carter."
There was no real need for an introduction on Victoria's part. She knew as much about William as anyone alive. She had spent almost two weeks doing nothing except finding out everything she could about him. There was a substantial amount of information about him that was available in the public records. Having heard that William would probably offer her the job, Victoria smiled and said, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Honey. Sugar, you've got quite a handful there with that young man."
Lucy smiled at the form of address and said, "I know."