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'The Blade'

cont'd

As Matthew continued to detail his vagabond tale, Brit looked on with a growing sense of both disgust and disapproval

'I mean, Mat - uhm Silas, what about Harvard, about graduation, we would all have killed to go there, that scholarship, the opportunity, the greatest professors in the world, do you ever regret dropping out of Harvard?'

Matthew appeared eager to answer this question.

'Sure there were doubts, but I think the best decision I ever made was to drop out of Harvard and decide to learn the Pingelapese language, which is really the larger point of my story. I got a job at a school teaching English, but the agreement was that I also had to learn the Pingelapese language, mainly for the benefit of the students. And also, it would help me with my other tasks, they made be a physical education teacher –'

'Oh do they play baseball?' Artie asked.

'No they play a Pingelapese form of dodgeball, it's like our dodgeball, with the exception that the object of the game is not to hit the person,' Matthew explained, 'and so the games would go on forever, but began my larger point is that learning the Pingelapese language was such an amazing experience because it allowed me real insight into their culture, and what a culture it is. Do you know how in the Eskimo or Inuit language, they have 400 words for snow, in Viking they have 200 words for pillage, well in Pingelapese, they have over 150 words for 'afternoon nap', untaki, feryknat, levstabik, siesta, poi oi nok –'

As Matthew continued on about the eighteen tenses of some verb, the wives began to have their own discussion, focusing mainly on the wonderful dinner and beauty of their new home.

'. . . and Meredith this corn is wonderful,' Lucy said, and others chimed in agreement. 'Is this the fresh corn that you get from the farmer's market?'

Before she could answer, Matthew blurted out, 'Yeah, the corn is pretty good, uhm one of my roommates at Harvard from Iowa actually mapped the genome for corn. Do you know that corn and humans share over 90 percent of the same DNA?'

No one exactly knew how to respond to this as evidenced by a new round of 'uh-huhs' that worked its way around the table until Artie said, 'That's interesting Silas.'

'I'm sorry, Brit back to your question, do I ever regret dropping out of Harvard?'

At that moment, the doorbell rang.

'That must be her,' Matthew announced.

Artie asked, 'What's her name?'

'Nila.'

Artie rushed over to answer the door. As the door creaked open, everyone became silent as they were all suddenly seized with curiosity, wondering what in the world Matt – Silas's wife would look like, or more precisely, wondering who in their right mind would marry this man. After hearing Artie's voice greet her, everyone in their own polite and stealth way, adjusted their neck and body, as Silas's wife stepped through the foyer and suddenly appeared in full view.

The immediate impression was breathtaking. She was - in a word - stunning. She was taller than average, had flowing, shoulder-length black hair, flawless light brown skin; bright brown eyes set off by her high cheekbones and a gleaming smile; her thin body was wearing a simple white-and-blue floral print dress, which was cut in such a way as to reveal the pleasing form of her breasts and figure. As she walked to the chair that Artie had promptly pulled out for her, her beauty was so radiant and fresh that everything else in the room, by contrast, seemed suddenly, stale, dull, and old, and all the onlookers at the table could do was look on awestruck, though with experiencing immense pleasure from viewing her beauty. By the way she embraced Matthew after sitting down, it was apparent, though still inexplicable, that she regarded him with real affection. The women noticed one other fact, she was not wearing any shoes and in fact was barefoot.

Matthew continued, gesturing to Brit, 'Your question, again I regard my decision to drop out of Harvard, quit that desk job, head to the South Seas, and learn to speak the Pingelapese language as probably the best decision of my entire life because it enabled me to meet my lovely wife, Nila.'

'Nila, that's a very lovely name,' Meredith said, as she brought a plate of food for Nila. 'What would you like to drink?'

Matthew replied, 'She's fine, but I'll take another beer, but something more of a Pilsner this time.'

Meredith appeared suddenly confused.

Artie replied, 'I know just what you want,' and went to retrieve it

Jane asked, regarding Nila with a warm smile, 'Nila, how do you like America?'

'Oh, she doesn't speak English, but I will translate as I speak the Pingelapese language.' He turned to Nila and asked, 'nutik stileok don hoe oi noi poi . . .', and continued at some length, after which Nila replied with what appeared to be a fairly detailed answer.

Finally, Matthew translated, 'she says, 'America - very good'.'

'How did you guys meet?'

'I was teaching English at this school where her brother worked, and one Saturday he invited me out with his friends to go tree climbing for coconuts and then karaoke, and Nila happened to be there, I took one look at her and said, 'I hope she doesn't have a boyfriend or is wife No. 2 to some local chieftain, and it turns out she was single,'' and, gesturing to her, 'the rest, as they say, is history -'

At this moment, Nila interrupted and spoke a great length before Matthew finally interposed, 'Okay, okay, I'll tell them.'

'At about the time, we started dating, she was losing her job at a Japanese dot com computer company, and they were going to shut down the company, though this was still during the height of the tech boom. Nila had on her own developed various applications, new ways of compressing data files, as well as something to do with how applications use memory -'

Ed asked with sudden interest, 'Nila's a computer programmer?'

'Oh yeah, she knows all that stuff, java, C++, power point, and in fact she is one of the leading people in developing and working with the java code, well at the time, Microsoft wanted to buy these applications for a fairly substantial sum of money, and that's when I said, and he gestured to cue Nila, so they both said at the same time with big smiles, 'Nupa steillapau eppau louie louie noi poi poi . . .' Matthew then continued, 'which roughly translates to, 'I have an old Harvard roommate who is now an intellectual property lawyer with a firm in Boston, why don't we give him a call, and see what is the best way to sell or market these applications.'

'Well, within the year, the code of the applications were copyrighted, and soon after that, Nila entered into a joint venture with a computer company in Boston. In like no time, they were licensing these applications to all the major computer companies throughout the world.'

Artie said, 'Wow, that's amazing, so you made out well.'
Matthew offered a knowing smile and said, 'We did all right.'
Everyone resumed eating their food in an effort to take this fantastic story all in.
Ed paused in cutting his steak to ask, 'But why return to Missouri?'
'Well, the Cancer Institute at the University is one of the best in the world, and her father was fighting cancer, and so we brought him here for the various forms of treatment. We were planning to move on to Boston, but the tech company up in Boston bought her half of the joint venture really at the height of its value, and it turned out to be such a great thing for us because Nila's applications would in six months time become outdated. Of course, another thing, you know she sold a year before the bust that occurred in the spring of 2000.'
'Timing is everything,' Brit said with grudging respect.
'Timing is important, but as I learned, not everything, no that would be for me learning the Pingelapese language,' Matthew paused as Artie gave him the opened beer and took a big drink.
'Well that worked out wonderfully for you,' Lucy said.
Artie asked, 'What do you think of the beer?'
'It's a delight!' Matthew said approvingly. 'Of course, there was one other reason I returned to my hometown ' Matthew paused tantalizingly as he looked around the table. 'Are you familiar with the Owen's Place?'
Everyone knew the historic Owen's home as Jane's following statement revealed:
'Sure, the famous railroad tycoon's mansion from the turn-of-the-century over on Pershing?'
'Well, I've bought it,' Matthew said.
Nila appeared suddenly annoyed, and she turned to Matthew and spoke in a low, but stern tone, 'Hoi hoi Matthew, nu meoi rei--'

Matthew fired back in an equally annoyed voice, 'Moi pis of, uma eu Silas, noi Matthew --'
'Ahhh shawd up,' Nila replied.
'I'm sorry, 'we' bought it, I misspoke.'
'The Owen's Place,' Meredith asked again with an astounded expression.
'Sure it's a fixer-upper, but at Harvard, I really took an interest in historic architecture.'
'They call that place the Midwest's Biltmore,' Ed informed.
'The Biltmore?' Artie asked, not catching the reference.
'The Biltmore - George Vanderbilt's house in Asheville, North Carolina, in the Blue Mountains, we visited their last summer, Jane, wasn't it amazing?'
Jane said at length, 'Breathtaking.'
Ed launched into a concise history of the Owen's Place before finally asking, 'How's the renovation going?'
'The renovation is a lot more difficult than I anticipated. When I was a kid, I always wanted an indoor pool with a slide, so in one of the rooms, what was formally known as 'The Tapestry Room', I'm putting in an indoor pool with a slide and a hot tub, and these historical types are all up in arms. What they forget is if I hadn't bought this mansion, it would have been sold to a developer for demolition, so they could put up a parking garage.' Matthew continued to discuss the various aspects of the renovation.

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