Chapter 156: Inches and Miles

Friday, June 29, 1984

Today started out much like yesterday, except that we had a bit of time to relax. Not much, but a bit.

There were two reasons for that. First, Chicago is closer to Sikeston than Longview is. Second, and more importantly, we weren’t going into Chicagoland itself. We only had to make it as far as Kankakee. The reason for that was simple: we didn’t want to take the RV into Chicago during rush hour — or even just after rush hour. We also didn’t really want to arrive at the place we’d found to park the RV in Skokie too late in the evening.

In the middle, of course, was lunch with Laura. That might be ‘relaxed,’ or it might not, but it would be great to see her again. All of us had been in touch with her (and apparently Jess was in regular contact with her), but it’d been a while, and there was only so much you could do over the phone.

We rolled into Carbondale just before noon. I stopped at a gas station, filled the RV, and gave Laura a call. She was eager to see us and suggested a sandwich shop in a strip mall for lunch. She promised they had enough parking for an RV.

It turned out she was right, on a technicality. The strip mall didn’t, but the grocery store next to it had plenty of space. We parked at the back of the lot and walked over to the sandwich shop.

Laura drove up just a few minutes later, got out, and went right to Jas, hugging her first.

“I think, in some ways, I have you to thank more than anyone else, and also maybe the most to apologize for,” she said. “If I hadn’t gone out in the road...”

Jas hugged her right back. “If you hadn’t, a lot of good things might not have happened. We’re good. We’re very good.”

Laura hugged everyone, with a few words for each of us, saving me for last.

She hugged me tightly. “I ... I’m so glad that you’re... you!” she said. “It’s ... I always thought that Asshole Steve could’ve been a great guy, and ... well, in some ways he was, but ... you’re the man I saw in him.”

“Thanks,” I said, hugging her right back. “You’re even more amazing than the Laura I knew, and she was pretty special. Or, at least, I thought so, but I wasn’t exactly the most knowledgeable about girls back then.”

She giggled. “Doesn’t mean we’re getting married,” she said, grinning. “No need to worry, Jasmine!”

Jas grinned back.

“Weirdly, we might make less sense in this universe than we did in my first life, even though you’re a better man and I’m a better woman,” she said. “We don’t need each other here, not that way. But...”

She trailed off, then said, “Let’s go eat, and then we can talk.”

We went in and ordered at the counter, getting drinks and picking a table away from other people. Not that it was busy — it wasn’t — but we would likely say a few strange things.

Once we’d gotten seated, Angie said, “So, how’s it been going? I mean ... maybe we all know some things, but none of us know everything.”

Laura giggled a bit. “Well, I’m not going to share everything, like...”

She paused. “Okay, that came out wrong. I meant, like, you...” she said, staring right at me. “ ... don’t get to hear stories from prom night. The real stuff ... well, debate went how I expected. We were good, but not good enough to get to Nationals. Not my goal, really. It was a means to an end, or so I thought, but ... see, now I wonder if it wasn’t a nudge from the universe to put me in Dallas, then Michigan, and then Northwestern at the right times.”

“Down that road lies madness,” said Paige, smiling a bit but also looking surprisingly serious.

Laura nodded. “I know! Believe me, I know! But the fact remains: if I don’t sign up for Debate, there’s virtually no way I meet any of you. In about four years, though, I see Steve’s name in the financial news, probably. Or Angie’s. Or both. Or ... whatever. Maybe I see Jess’s name, or maybe not. The thing is, if I see Steve’s name and it’s about being rich from a timely investment in a company, that sends all the wrong signals, and I avoid him like the plague.”

Paige nodded. “I get that. Still ... give the universe an inch and it’ll take a mile.”

Laura sighed. “I think I have to give it a few inches. Angie — a better one — winding up living with a better Steve for four years? Universe. Me being in position to meet Steve when I’d listen — when backed into it, admittedly — instead of hiding? Universe, probably. I just have to draw the line and say ‘no more.’ That it did what it needed to do to give us a chance to know each other, and maybe — hopefully — help each other, but that’s it.”

“I can buy that,” Angie said, nodding, “And I probably do. There are some other lucky coincidences along the way that I don’t completely trust. But they’re just things that imparted some knowledge. None of them is so big that they’re life-changing if we don’t let them make a difference.”

“Same for me,” I said.

“Speaking of ... Jess and I have talked a lot,” Laura said. “She’s ... I like her a lot more than I thought I would. I think I get why her other version wound up with Asshole Steve, as much of a bastard as he was. He was her bastard, and she could tame him towards herself. I didn’t realize how deep that girl is, or could be, or ... whatever.”

“She’s amazing,” Angie said. “Steve found that out first, but he shared it with me...”

“And us, as much as he could,” Jas said.

“Plus, we got to know her over the last year in Drama,” Paige said.

Laura nodded. “I think she’s going to blow away whoever casts her first. She won’t jump right to being a star, but it’s probably only two or three steps. Some minor role she knocks out of the park, then maybe a bigger one, and finally a movie that gets her out there. She’s way too smart to fall for one where she’s just playing a bimbo or an airhead. That could wreck her career before she gets going. Avoid that, and she’s probably golden.”

“I’m going to sit on my hands with regard to specific career advice,” I said.

“Me, too!” Angie said.

“Besides a few things,” I said. “Like some vague warnings about the most awful of the ‘casting couch’ stories.”

“I told her to be extremely careful around Miramax,” Laura said.

“I did, too,” I said, “but I’m surprised you know about that.”

Laura shrugged. “Weinstein went to prison in 2010 for those rapes.”

“See, in my universe, that had just come out in 2016 or 2017 or something,” I said. “Some of the court stuff was still going on.”

“Ah!” Laura said. “I guess I win? That guy is a snake, and he’s exactly the sort of snake that could get at Jess, because — aside from being a snake — he makes movies she would do well in.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And it’s not a ‘no.’ She just needs backup and protection.”

“In this universe, he might find his ass in jail a decade or two earlier,” Laura said, grinning.

“Might,” I said. “Or not at all, if he gets scared enough to keep things consensual.”

“Speaking of careers,” Laura said. “I’m still not going to share anything at all. It’s not ... I’m not at all worried about you, so much as...”

She paused and bit her lower lip for a second.

“How do I put this ... it’s...”

“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t need to explain.”

“I really do,” she said, nodding slowly to herself. “Okay ... it’s ... I look at what you’re doing, or what I think you’re doing, and I look at where I’m going to be, and what I’ll need, and I think we’ll fit together really well. The problem is ... that bugs me. Not in a big way, but in a ‘What are you up to, Universe?’ sort of way. And also an ‘Is this fair?’ way. I know you guys have thought about the ethics of what you’re doing and I trust you there, no question. There’s no ethical problem about me recreating my own inventions, obviously. But if we start coordinating now and build this juggernaut, I worry that we’ll screw it up, and maybe it’ll be too obviously something we shouldn’t know, and that we’ll be screwing people. Maybe none of that is true, but I think we’re better off letting things just happen. You tell me outlines, I tell you outlines, and we see what happens.”

“I’m fine with that,” I said.

Angie nodded. “Me, too. Completely.”

Jas nodded more slowly. “Speaking as half of the ‘we’re from here’ contingent, I think you’re overplaying that last worry. You live here now. This is your universe, and Steve’s, and Angie’s, and you have a right to what you’re doing as long as you don’t take anyone else’s ideas and present them as your own.”

“Here’s the problem,” Laura said. “I don’t think my ideas are that unique. They’re huge because of timing. I got there first and best. And had it stolen, but still. But they’re obvious enough that, if I was to explain them, there’s a very high probability someone in Steve’s universe will have had one or more of them eventually — and he would know it. That makes it that, from his perspective, he’s participating in stealing ‘their’ idea, even though it’s also my idea.”

Jas nodded slowly, with the rest of us doing pretty much the same thing.

“That ... that makes sense,” she said. “I would still say it’s fine, but by our rules it’s not really fine, it’s ... messy and awful and sucky. That, and it doesn’t hurt us to not know. And...”

“Before you say it, yes, play your own cards close to the vest for now. It could be the case that someone got an idea you have and famously ran with it in my world. We’ll be close enough. I really believe that one day, Team Laura and Team Steve, Angie, Jasmine, and Paige will be working together, if not quite the same team. And that we’ll be friends before and after. I’m past any worries about you two being your old selves and just super-sneaky.”

“In my defense, I am sometimes super-sneaky,” Angie said, giggling. “Just not about this.”

“She is,” Paige said, nodding.

Laura grinned. “I totally believe it. But, yes, I mean, I believe you’re not sneaky about anything I’d be upset about.”

“Good,” I said, and so did Angie.

“It is,” Laura said. “Makes it much easier to share things.”

“Speaking of...” Angie said. “Sorry your prom guy wasn’t a keeper.”

Laura snorted, then said, “I knew that going in. He was ... fun. A lot of fun. I wanted to get ... back on the horse, I guess. He accomplished that. No illusions that it was anything more. I think I’m going with Jess’s plan — no plans for nothing serious, high standards, and I’ll stay entertained in the meantime.”