Guess who is Coming to Dinner

By

Pat Foley

Chapter 3

After that meeting, I put their proposed visit firmly out of my mind until I got my mid-terms out of the way. Though I tried to be more careful about keeping my study materials picked up. Not that I’m in any way untidy, but Spock barely seemed to make an impact on the apartment. In many ways it looked the same after he arrived back at the Academy from a long starship tour of duty as it did when he was on the Enterprise. I always seemed to add noticeable clutter.

I’d also decided to make a concerted effort to make dinner for the practice alone. My lack of culinary skills wasn’t entirely my fault. Living in student housing for years, I hadn’t had a real kitchen of my own, unless you count those nasty communal dorm ones whose lack of amenities is made up for with excess dirt. I’d never had the time or interest either, not when it was just for me. I preferred to go out with friends than stay home and have little dinner parties.

Though right now my friends were becoming something of an irritant. The communications grapevine in Starfleet was faster than any known high-nano device. This afternoon alone I received four calls from ostensively well meaning friends, who’d called to congratulate me on my team captaincy, and offer a few choice remarks about steering clear of Delia. Or, even more ominously, who had heard of the Ambassador’s intended visit and offered their own horror story encounters with invaders of the in-law kind. A few invited us out to dinner.

“Spock has long duty later on,” I told them. “Anyway, I’m cooking.”

The reactions varied from disbelief to incipient hilarity.

“Trying to get him out of his long shift with food poisoning?” one jokester quipped.

“I’ll look for him later in the base infirmary,” was the usual response.

Eventually, I’d had enough of that and set the phone to red alerts only.

I had made dinner. And taste tested it to ensure it wasn’t as fatal as say, a phaser blast, though slow poison might still have been a possibility. I was splitting my attention between my hyperphysics text -- the rest of my netbooks put neatly out of sight, and idly wondering if Spock and I should start inviting a few friends over for a meal rather than our going out all the time. Spock wasn’t anti-social. He always complacently joined in when we went out in company. He simply seldom instigated such gatherings. I didn’t know how Vulcans in general were about such things, so I did a netsearch on the words. The results were, of course, totally useless.

Then, under all the pressures of the day and the future visit to come, I did what I had sworn I would never do. I typed in his mother’s name into the net. To ensure I didn’t get a slew of academic references, I added the word social.

Even for a future Starfleet officer, the results were daunting. I was regaled with swirling accounts of the elegant dinners for 200 hosted in a building that looked like all the Terran castles that ever were, on steroids. Vulcan steroids. Interstellar menus, fabulous ambiance, palatial settings and a hostess who looked as if she didn’t spend her afternoons whacking her friends, however much they might deserve it, with a pugel stick.

Clearly I had to do something to compare. I read, then added a little more pepper to my sauce. Read some more and restlessly fluffed a few pillows, in the way of being a grand hostess, au courant with the latest fine foods and homes. Then I looked around our standard service apartment, took a look at what I was competing with, stopped kidding myself and resolutely closed the search windows.

I was considering starting that elusive interstellar incident myself – where were Klingons when you really needed them? -- when the door cycled, and Spock breezed through, bringing in the scent of rain and fog that in San Francisco swept in from the sea at most twilights.

“Did you ever find a hairdresser for your goat?” he asked, picking up the conversation from lunchtime without missing a beat, while he shrugged out of his coat.

I made a face while I studied his. It must have something to do with the shape of his mouth that he could seem to be smiling even with a straight face. “Very funny. How was your day at Games and Theory? Finished plotting the destruction of the graduating class yet?”

“Classified,” he said, reflexively turning circumspect, his very convincing Vulcan mask revealing nothing. Which put to death all my theories about the shape of his mouth.

When he turned around, he proved to have also been concealing two pint containers, one of raspberries. That wasn’t unusual for him. They were in season and they were the kind of low sugar fruit Vulcans favored. And if Spock was any guide, Vulcans preferred their food fresh. He was a regular customer of the farm market carts that surrounded the Academy; the valley farmers plying on service people’s weakness for non-reconstituted food. The officers called them bumboat carts after the ancient mariner term for boat peddlers who used to circle navy ships. First year students were not supposed to patronize them. Part of our Academy training was to prove that if we managed a deep space mission we would be able to handle living solely on ship’s fare. A lot of students cheated – it was an easy rule to circumvent. It was typical of Spock that when I’d been in first year, he had shared that restriction whenever he was with me, unmentioning, as if it were the most logical thing that if I couldn’t eat such things, neither would he. And also typical that when my restriction ended, he went back to his preferred eating habits, likewise without a single comment. Perhaps that’s why I wasn’t too surprised when I saw the other carton contained my once a week indulgence -- vanilla Swiss almond ice cream.

“It’s not Sunday,” I said, referring to the only day that I splurged with a dessert other than fruit.

“A celebration of your captaincy?” he offered.

“You heard about that?”

“Janders warned me not to get on your bad side – at least when you had access to a pugel stick.” He looked a little amused, since of course as a Vulcan he could make mincemeat of most any human, however armed. “That victory aside, I thought that after the events of this morning, some small palliative might be called for.” He went to take the containers in the kitchen and drew up, taking in the sight of the dining area with its covered dishes sitting ready. “You made dinner.”

“It’s not flattering to sound quite so surprised,” I said. “It’s just a salad and some pasta. The sauce is fresh though. I bought the tomatoes and basil from a bumboat cart.”

His brows were still raised. “Thank you,” he said.

It was the kind of thing that always highlighted for me the differences between us. The things he failed to expect of me.

Minus the periodic tours of duty that took him back to the Enterprise, we’d been together for a couple of years now. At first, we’d both kept some emotional distance. Him because he was Vulcan. Me because from the first moment of our meeting, I’d been concerned about even having too personal a conversation with an alien, worried over the fact that it was so easy to get in over your head.(*1) I hadn’t forgotten my first instructor in field work warning me that Terran humans’ excessive friendliness can be grossly mistaken by non-Terran humans and aliens. Smile at one, he warned, and they may end up following you forever. The irony was that in all that, it was I who ended up following Spock. All the way into Starfleet. Even after all this time, I’d never quite banished that worry.

In spite of our on again, off again relationship, and our determination to be sensible about the fact that we couldn’t expect to always be together, we had both come to find the separations increasingly difficult. I hadn’t planned on marrying so soon, before establishing my career. Not to anyone. Not even to Spock, however much it seemed we complemented each other.

One of the chief reasons for our decision to make our relationship official when I graduated was purely logistical. Unromantic as it might seem, all other qualifications being equal, married couples were given preference regarding joint postings on deep space commissions. Spock’s commission was with the Enterprise. But as for me, there were a dozen starships and hundreds of smaller research and scout vessels that I could get posted to. I wouldn’t know until I graduated where my fate would lead me. Gaila might tease me about being a swot, but I’d been determined to make it the Enterprise, his ship, the newest and best starship in the Fleet, by the sheer weight of my exemplary ability, not by favoritism or nepotism.

But as time had gone on and the day of reckoning drew near, I had become unwilling to rely on the judgment of some faceless posting officer. While I had every expectation I was going to graduate as the top rated linguist in the Academy, and earn that Enterprise posting, I was unwilling to leave it totally in Fleet’s hands. There were dozens of good Fleet reasons apart from merit that simple service requirements -- vacancies, needed specialties, other’s preferences and favoritism -- might dictate posting me on some other equally – to them – meritorious ship. And then it might take me years to get back to the Enterprise. If we wanted to stay together, even have the chance to make that long term decision to marry with all that it meant for Vulcans, we had to make at least a human commitment now. Or we might lose that opportunity forever. After a few late night conversations with Spock, we’d both agreed it made good logical sense to register our intent to marry.

Starfleet had been perfectly pleased with the situation. Spock was a valuable officer. They didn’t want to risk losing him back to Vulcan. I had proven myself as more than capable of making it in a service career and had an exemplary Academy record. While there were always risks that a relationship could go sour, the consensus in Starfleet was that when fellow officers married it cemented their allegiance to Starfleet and they would have a much better track record of staying married and in Starfleet as opposed to officer/civilian unions. The few senior officers who knew had let me know they approved of our decision, and me. So I had been doubly welcomed into the Starfleet fold, both from ability and from alliance.

But in spite of our joint decision, in spite of all this familiarity, of going to sleep in each other’s arms at night and waking together in the morning, of current association and future commitment, privately Spock still so often treated me as if I were a privileged guest to his life. As if he were sometimes surprised by all our relationship would mean in his future. His life could still so easily stay self-contained. A closed circle. Even down to this place. I lived here, but it still felt like I was a guest. He never seemed to expect me to be more than that. At least, not yet.

Of course the apartment was largely self-maintenance. And he had his own routine before I moved in, that largely involved picking up after himself so constantly, in a Vulcan superneat way, that the place never had a ghost of a chance to need me to do much. I had never been bothered by that before. I had more important things on my mind than housework and certainly hadn’t moved in to take care of it. But I suddenly felt bothered by my lack of presence in that area of his life.

I put down a forkful of salad and looked at him. “Do you know, you never ask me to run errands for you?”

He divested his attention from his appreciate consumption of dinner. “Why would you expect me to?”

“Or even ask me to do a share of the household chores?”

He raised a brow. “You have your studies and classes.”

“But you work. You never considered that you might, just sometimes, need my help around here?”

His brow furrowed. “Around here,” he repeated. He looked around at the tiny, standard service officers quarters, purposely designed with minimal maintenance in mind. “What in the way of largely automated household chores could I possibly require assistance with?”

I wasn’t about to be defeated by logic. I pointed my fork at him accusingly, a miniature pugel stick. “Even when you come off a 36 hour shift, you don’t even so much as ask me to process a meal, much less cycle your laundry.”

He put his fork down at this, and looked at me curiously. “It takes twenty seconds to put garments in the fresher. Another twenty to take them out. It would take less time to do the chore than to ask.”

“Well, you routinely cycle mine when you do yours. Why is that? And aren’t you doing it because you see that I need it?”

“I have never really considered the issue,” he said, all injured innocence. “It was just there to be done.”

“Well, think about it now.”

He flicked a brow in judicious consideration. “No doubt you had something more vital to do with those twenty seconds,” he suggested. And picked up his fork again as if hoping that would be the end of it.

I shook my head and put my hand over his, stopping him.

He stared down at my arresting hand and, giving a little sigh, a Vulcan concession to my emotion, spoke to it rather than me. “Nyota, may I ask why are we arguing about laundry? Because clearly this discussion cannot be about that.”

I tightened my hand on his. “I just have this horrible feeling that if I disappeared, you wouldn’t even notice. Spock.” I shook my head and appealed to him. “Do you need me at all?”

“For laundry?” He asked as if still trying to understand.

“Your parents are coming!”

He sat back and regarded me. “Their laundry will be done,” he said, deadpan.

“This is no time for joking around.”

“I cannot correlate the subjects in this conversation.”

“Their coming just makes…us… somehow, more real. And sometimes I don’t know if we are. And if we are, if it is right.”

He put down his fork and stared at me. “Are you saying you are reconsidering--” he stopped short as if he refused to go on.

“No,” I said quickly. Then… “Yes. I want to know that you need me.”

“For housework?”

“In your life!”

“Does not the fact that you are here, that we have committed to a marriage, make that obvious?”

“No!”

He drew up a little and gave me a look that I knew well, that said I was putting human demands on him, more than he was comfortable with. It was unjust, since he rarely seemed to put Vulcan ones on me, but then, he had grown up in a Vulcan household where the chief female protagonist was human. He’d learned his side of this equation early. I hadn’t learned the corollary for him.

“Nyota,” he said, his voice very soft. “Why I wish you to be here has everything to do with you, and nothing whatsoever to do with laundry and dinner.”

“Don’t you see that it’s all part of a piece? Making a life together. Not just two people cohabitating side by side. And just for the record, I’m not sure that I want to give dinner parties for 200 people!”

His brows rose to his bangs at that. “My parents are two, not two hundred. They did not suddenly divide and expand like bacteria.”

“I’m not talking about that. I…” I drew a breath and confessed. “I read some things on the net about your mother.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. “Much of what is said about her is sensationalistic.”

“It’s what’s true that bothers me more. Including that she’s a fabulous hostess.”

He tilted his head in concession to that. “I’ve never heard it said she was any good with a pugel stick, however,” he offered.

I threw a frustrated blow in his general direction. He blocked it automatically, without losing that half smirk.

I sighed and settled down. “Maybe I just need to hear you say that you love me.” I said, falling back on the three words that throughout the history of human relations, purported to make everything that was wrong all right again between couples. Human ones, that is.

Except that he wasn’t human. That magic phrase wasn’t going to work for us. One of the many issues in our relationship which would have no easy answers. He drew a deep breath. “I…can’t say those words.”

“I know that it’s provincial of me to ask,” I admitted.

“I simply cannot.”

I bit my lip and watched him, seeing his face go shuttered with control, with waiting. I realized he was waiting for me. To what? Say I couldn’t live with him without that? Walk out the door? As I looked at him, he gradually grew very still.

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head and shivering, in spite of the warmth of the room, the setting one of our many compromises between human and Vulcan needs. “I’ve just had this really bad day. I’m being unfair. Forgive me.”

He rose silently and went to adjust the temperature controls. It was part and parcel of his character, his nature, that he saw was needed and did it to the best of his ability. Coming back to the table, he seemed more resolute. “Isn’t it enough knowing my regard for you?” he asked seriously, teasing aside.

I knew it would have to be enough. “I guess so.” Some part of me still rebelled enough that I looked away as I said it.

“We neither of us can change what we are,” he said. “But I have had somewhat more practice in dealing with that reality than you have. Up till now, perhaps.” He sighed, just a little. “I have to go.”

“You’ve hardly eaten,” I said looking at his barely touched meal. “And you’ve got a long duty shift ahead of you.”

“I have eaten enough.”

“I hate your thirty-six hour shifts.”

“You will dislike them more when you begin them yourself,” he said with an ironic brow. “They are difficult for humans.”

I knew that, and I wasn’t looking forward to them. Like intern doctors, Starfleet officers in training served one thirty six hour duty shift a week, to simulate actual shipboard stress or emergency conditions and exigencies. Being the most junior command officer in Games and Theory, Spock got stuck with one, and on the worst day too. Friday night to early Sunday morning. Being Vulcan, it was no particular stress for him to work a long shift. It always left me at loose ends on Friday and Saturday nights, going out alone or with friends. And it did mean he then had all Sunday and Sunday night free. The next junior officer picked up the slack after him. We had that whole day free to spend together. It could be worse.

“I know. I think the whole long duty shift is just a ruse though. The practice was designed to give senior officers a whole weekend free.”

“Perhaps. But such shifts are part of a service career.” His hand covered mine and then he leaned down, and kissed me lightly. “Go out,” he suggested.

I tightened my hand on his and turned the kiss into something more too. “I’m going to miss you.”

“It’s not going to rain on Sunday,” he said. “We can go to the park. See if you are as good with a bat as a pugel stick.”

I made a face. “I’ll leave that to you,” I said. But after he left and I had cleaned up the dishes, and made a face at the ice cream, refusing to be tempted, I did take his suggestion, put on some happy clothes and my best smile and went out. It was frustrating to actually be in a relationship and yet not have him around on Friday and Saturday nights, to be continually fending off pickup requests from non-Fleet yahoos who didn’t know my situation. But it was better than staying at home and studying till facts came out of my ears. All work and no play made Uhura a very unhappy girl.

Sunday did dawn bright and clear, and before I was even quite awake, I heard Spock rummaging in the kitchen. Being cooped up for thirty six hours behind a command console in Games and Theory didn’t make him tired. It made him rammy, impatient for a long run. I managed to tempt him into something a little less strenuous, but then after that and an hours’ nap, rather than spend a leisurely morning with the Sunday news sheets, he was back in the kitchen, this time, tossing water and juice bottles into a bag – for me. He was like a camel and could go days without water – and some food for a picnic lunch. I shrugged into sweats over my running shorts and grabbed a blanket. I had to rush to catch up with him as we headed out the door.

“This never ceases to surprise me about you,” I said, jogging to keep up with him. “I thought Vulcans were perpetual swots.”

“We are,” he said. “In between hiking on the Forge. There being no Forge in San Francisco, Golden Gate Park will have to do.”

On the way he was waved at and importuned by numerous bumboat cart owners, who knew him well. We added some berries and grapes to our bag, and some sugar snap peas, which Spock ate raw, as if they were candy. He always seemed surprised that I preferred them steamed.

“How does a fresh air fiend end up in Starship service?” I asked as we dumped our blanket and supplies in an area of the park largely claimed by Starfleet personnel. One thing about the perennial presence of Starfleet officers and cadets there -- no one ever pinched your stuff anymore. It might as well have been left in a bank vault. I stripped down from sweats to running shorts.

“A similar question might be how does a girl who grew up loving the freedom of Africa’s hills and plains exchange them for the confines of a starship?” he asked before taking off and all I could see was the soles of his running shoes.

It was a question that involved too long an answer, and he was already yards ahead. I put my long legs to good use.

After a six mile circuit of the park and the trails around the bay and the bridge, I left him to do another ten and went back to our blanket to catch up on my sleep. When he returned, he was not even breathing hard in our light gravity, as fresh as if he hadn’t spent the last 36 hours on duty and the rest in strenuous activity of one sort or another. I offered him my water bottle and he took a polite drink, then settled down to munch peas and watch with alert interest one of the inevitable baseball games being held by Fleet personnel.

Baseball is something of an institution at Starfleet Academy. Ferociously competitive games are played between returning “old boy” officers and new cadets. The officers are experienced and deadly. The cadets are young and in better condition, generally. The match up between the two is something to see.

Spock was not much of one for Terran sports, but he had an appreciation for the sheer mathematical precision and elegance of baseball. The geometry and physics of it, all lines and vectors and trajectories. The linear methodology of the action. The lack of physically beating up on one’s fellow players -- as was found in football. Of all the team sports that a Vulcan might find acceptable, it was the most suitable.

And he was good at it. Almost too good. In his cadet career he had been famous for pitching numerous no-hit shut-outs (*2), and he had a deadly arm. Out of fairness, he was no longer on any particular team. But he was often importuned to pinch hit in the park pickup games.

“You haven’t forgotten,” I said, waving a bunch of grapes at him, “that when my exams are over we are going to really concentrate on getting ready for your parent’s arrival?”

“What is there to prepare for?” Spock asked, eyes intent on an infield play.

“I'm not going to offer them grapes and raw peas. That’s why I need you to help me. Getting in their favorite foods. What does your father like to eat?”

"Of Terran foods? He's been known to eat grapes and raw peas."

"Cooked foods!"

His eyes panned to mine. “Starfleet cadets, definitely. Particularly those majoring in Linguistics.”

I made a face. “Did your father ever tell you that you tease way too much for a Vulcan?”

He shifted reflexively on the blanket, slightly discomfited. “My father, no. Being aware of my half human heritage, he was always relatively tolerant of my behavior in that regard. But my Vulcan teachers often reiterated that fact." He tilted his head. "I had hoped, in a Terran society, it would be less noticeable.”

“It is most absolutely not.”

“How regrettable.” He spared a glance for me. “Nyota, I’ve already told you their visit will not be a problem. If you truly don’t wish to have them take us out to dinner, they will eat whatever we choose to serve them, and be perfectly polite about it. They are, after all, diplomats.”

“What if I served your father a goat?”

His brows rose to his bangs. “So that is where the goat comes in. I had been speculating for days about that.”

“It’s perfectly reasonable for me to respect my heritage,” I argued. “Brides have been walking down European and American aisles for hundreds of years in ridiculous outmoded white dresses that they spend thousands of credits on and can only wear once. But it’s not my tradition. And I’ll have a goat at my wedding if I choose.”

“I never said one word against the goat. Have as many as you like.”

“But what would your parents think? Seriously.”

“My mother would no doubt ask your grandmother dozens of questions. She is fascinated by multicultural ceremonies. It is her profession, after all. And so long as he did not have to eat the goat, my father would be indifferent.”

“What if it was a terrible insult if he didn’t?”

He blinked at that. “To eat the goat? Cooked, I take it. If it was absolutely required to do so he would simply exercise Vulcan control.”

I had to be satisfied with that, I supposed. A couple of officers left the game to go on duty, and some of the players urged us to get into the game. I skimmed into my sweats – I didn’t want to slide in shorts -- and went first into right field, while Spock went to the mound. But I didn’t have to worry too much about my fielding. With Spock pitching, no one was going to get a hit. He narrowed his eyes, tilted his head, and with that little smile curving his mouth he pitched those balls so fast you could hardly see them fly. He struck out three batters and then we went into bat. Spock hit one out into center field that no one tried to stop -- we all watched it barrel toward the bay like it had been shot out of a canon while Spock jogged around the bases at a leisurely pace for a Vulcan, not bothering to slide home. But after he crossed the plate a cadet ran up to him with the communicator he’d left in the dugout. One doesn’t slide into home with a communicator on your hip.

“Commander Spock, you have a message.”

“I hope you aren’t being called back to duty,” I said. It wouldn’t be the first time if someone were sick. Or his superiors had dreamed up some special assignment.

He shrugged indifferently, used to the exigencies of a service career, and flipped the unit open. As he replayed the message, his relaxed posture straightened, and I thought it was duty. Then his eyes hooded and I saw his lower lip push up slightly. So subtle a difference, if you weren’t used to studying his face, as I was, with all my familiarity with Vulcan body language, book learning and Spock combined. I realize it couldn’t be something as minor as another duty shift -- he would have come back to his normal demeanor already instead of still appearing pensive.

“Spock? I went over to him. "What is it?”

He glanced over at me as if he had quite forgotten where he was for a moment. Then he looked ironic. “You may have gotten your wish.”

“My wish? My eyes widened. “You don’t mean…?”

“No, not a war,” he said. “But my parents have been requested to attend special strategy session in Washington. There are arrangements still being made – many others are involved -- but there is a chance it will take place on the day they were to spend here. My mother had left a message to warn us,” he met my eyes meaningfully, “before we make any preparations.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He nodded curtly. I knew him well enough to realize he was restraining his emotions, rather than rejecting mine. But a light had gone out of his eyes.

“You’re next up,” he said, handing me the bat and went off behind the dugout, flipping his communicator open, as if preparing to send a message in relative privacy.

I couldn’t listen in but I wanted to. And I realized I was disappointed too. So disappointed the first ball nearly took off my nose. I was so deep in thought I had forgotten what I was doing.

“Strike one,” the umpire called.

“Come on, Nyota!” Some of my team members called.

I got into stance and stared down the pitcher. And when that next ball came over the plate I hit it with all the frustration of the past week. It sailed past the outfielders, and I knew I was going to get a run. But as I slid into home plate I saw Spock, just outside the dugout, talking quietly into his communicator. And I knew, in some respects, I really had missed the ball. It wasn’t like me, not at all. A regrettable, if understandable, human lapse on my part. But I vowed I was going to handle this better.

No matter what we faced.

To be continued…

*1 see Linguistics

*2 see the Academy Letters