Chapter 67: Nirvana?

Thursday, December 22, 1983

Jas and Paige made it one more day of sick notes. That would be a problem during the school year, but right now, during Schroedinger’s School, no one cared.

We spent a fair bit of the day watching Monty Python in Meg’s room. Movies, skits, interviews — whatever Meg could get on videotape was on display. Most of the Drama kids came over, too.

All was quiet with Jess, but I really didn’t expect to hear anything until January.

It took a bit of time after school to get my taxes sorted out. First, I had to stop by my bank and get into my safe deposit box. Removing enough cash to pay the taxes made for a fairly substantial pile. It’s not like I hadn’t done that before — after all, I’d brought back even more cash after the UH bet — but I was always nervous.

This time, too, I’d be carrying it into a bank openly. It was a pile of cash of the size that the IRS took an instant interest in. Still, I’d be making the checks payable to the IRS, so the bank could hardly claim I was trying to evade their knowledge.

When I got to my first pick, a large commercial bank near the mall, Angie and I headed in. We both figured having her along might be a distraction. Who knew?

It turned out that either I was lucky or I’d worried too much. The tellers were busy helping people who were depositing cash. Stacks of cash. A lot of cash. It was 1983, after all. A lot of businesses operated on cash to a large extent — far more than had in 2021.

I went up to a teller and explained that I needed two cashier’s checks. She had me fill out two slips. When I got to the account number line (the second one), I explained that I didn’t have an account. She just shrugged and cited their ten dollar fee.

When I passed her the slips, she blinked and said, “Those are some large checks! What are you...?”

She paused, reading, then said, wrinkling her nose, “Oh! Taxes! Ugh! Ouch! Business must be good, though, if you owe that much!”

“It is, thanks,” I said.

She collected the cash and quickly counted it. I’d already sorted it, so she had little trouble. Then she put it through a counting machine to recheck it, just as I’d figured she would.

She then handed me a form to fill out. I had to fill out the top part, with my name, address, and social security number. The rest was for her.

While I did that, she put the cash in her drawer and locked it. Then she went back to a set of typewriters, quickly typed up the checks, which she then presented to me for inspection. When I approved them, she checked my form against my driver’s license, thanked me, and that was that. Problem solved!

Angie and I took the checks and tax returns to the post office, and I stood in line briefly before getting them sent off by Certified Mail, complete with insurance and a return receipt (going to the PO Box, of course). Watching the postal clerk take them and put them in the outgoing mail bin was a huge relief!

Technically, I was now right with the IRS. The IRS would still need to accept the returns, but that was essentially it. Unless an auditor showed up (or, more realistically, an audit letter appeared), we were done, and the rest of the money was now legal and aboveboard.

I sent off the paperwork for the new LLC, ‘MNM Investments’, at the same time. That left Paige out, but she wasn’t in the loop yet. Most likely, I’d redo the whole thing and create ‘MNMS’ or the like once she was.

We went out with Jas and Paige after school, but again opted against dessert. They felt good enough to go out for noodle soup, but not for more. No sense pushing it, especially with next week coming up.

When we got home, it was to find our grades waiting for us. Mom and Dad had waited impatiently for us to get home and open our envelopes. As we’d expected, we both had straight A’s.

We, of course, quickly called Jas and Paige (using both lines), both of whom had also gotten straight A’s. We made a plan to celebrate tomorrow night. I suggested Brennerman’s, but they reminded me that it might be full. We could always figure out a plan tomorrow if it was.

After I got off the phone with Jas, I called Brennerman’s. They were, indeed, full. Bribing the maître d’ might have worked, but that was going a bit far for celebrating the report cards we’d all expected.

On a whim, I gave Candice a call. She’d gotten straight A’s, too. Sherry had just one B, in Calculus. That was hardly going to cause her a problem.

Neither of them was available until January, so we made tentative plans to get together then. My January was likely going to be busy, but they were a priority, so hopefully it would work out.

We wished each other a Merry Christmas. I knew this was a hard time of the year for Candice, but also, now, a happy one. It certainly seemed like it was far more the latter than the former. Still, if she was prone to what would be called Seasonal Affective Disorder (I’d never heard the term in this go-round), it would behoove her to pay attention and take steps to control it. Few people had worse memories centered around Christmas and New Year’s than she did.

I didn’t mention any of that, of course. ‘Speak of the Devil and he shall appear.’

Friday, December 23, 1983

Jas and Paige were both feeling better, so they joined us for the last day of ‘bonus’ week. As with the rest of the week, there was little going on. This week hadn’t really felt punitive, but it hadn’t felt beneficial either.

Cammie would be leaving to visit relatives tomorrow. Mel, Morty, and Mark were already gone, as was Gene. A lot of people were still around, though.

It was trending even colder outside. I’d remembered correctly about that. This was already a brutal winter for Houston, and it felt like it was only going to get worse from here. We’d already had to cover the sensitive plants and made sure that all of our outside pipes were dripping. Pipes burst in Houston in the winter on a regular basis because no one had proper insulation to keep them from freezing. Keeping them dripping prevented that, but you had to check every so often and make sure they were still dripping. If they weren’t, a hair dryer or a propane torch would hopefully save the day.

I actually liked the cold (though perhaps somewhat less than I had when I was fat). Even so, it would be nice to get out of town and explore New Orleans for a few days, especially considering the company.

With Brennerman’s out, and many restaurants full of last-minute holiday shoppers, people celebrating the beginning of Christmas proper, and so forth, we decided a Feliz Navidad dinner at Rico’s was the best option.

Again, Rico himself was there, and this time he came over and thanked the four of us. Since we’d started going there, and especially since we’d pitched the sponsorship deal (which, for Rico, was a pretty tiny investment, even with his tight budget), his business had picked up considerably. Not just Memorial students, though that was now the biggest single chunk of his business, but parents, friends, and so forth. Just having cars in front of the place regularly had helped. It looked like a busy place, and therefore it stayed a busy place.

Plus, that busyness had gotten him noticed, first by the Leader and then by the Chronicle. Getting two food critics to say nice things about him helped. Marvin Zindler had happened by, too, and while he found a few things to nitpick about, he gave them a solid health score, which couldn’t hurt.

Yet another little ripple, among many. First-life Steve didn’t particularly even like tacos while he was at Memorial, and he never would’ve ventured into Rico’s, nor would he have had the connections to do anything. First-life Angie would’ve avoided the place like the plague. What socialite would go to a cheap hole-in-the-wall taco joint?

The jokes Linda and I made about a drug-smuggling front notwithstanding, Rico seemed like a good guy. I’d always gotten the feeling that he just wanted to make and sell tacos. Oh, there were some more things on the menu. The ubiquitous chips and salsa, quesadillas (which he dismissively called ‘gringo food’), and a variety of Mexican soups (which were delicious, for the most part, though I’d still prefer Pho King for soup).

He wasn’t effusive with his thanks. Just a quick few words, some handshakes, hugs from the girls, and an exchange of ‘Feliz Navidad’ and ‘Feliz Año Nuevo’ and that was it. Even so, or perhaps because it was understated, his thanks felt very genuine. He knew we’d changed things for him, and he was grateful. He knew we’d done it for our own reasons, not because we wanted to make his taco shop a success, but we’d still done it.

Amongst the many little funny coincidences in the world, the closure of Spring Branch would, no doubt, bring more Hispanic students to Memorial. They might well discover Rico’s, and his business would again increase. What if he’d shut down before that even happened?

Small steps, little actions. Not everything had to be some grand gesture. Just do right by people who deserved it and, hopefully, good things would come to them. If karma was the rule, we were hopefully generating some good karma. Even if it wasn’t strictly true from a religious sense, good karma is still a good policy.

Tonight was the same as last night. Jas and Paige were on the mend, but we’d all almost certainly be better waiting for New Orleans. Both tomorrow and Sunday were off-limits, of course.

Monday was possible, but unlikely. We had tentative plans to do something (most likely a movie) with a big group: all of the Marshalls, all of the Nguyens (except Andrew), and maybe all of the Seilers (though it was unclear if Ted would go, and several people were hoping he wouldn’t want to).

The thought of such an outing would probably make most high school students nervous, at the least, but we all loved the idea. Everyone got along well, and it wasn’t as if it was any sort of a secret that we were sleeping together (the couples, not all of us!) nor that we planned to live together in college. I think even Mom and Dad had gone from thinking ‘Maybe they’ll have to live in the dorms’ to thinking ‘Good for them!’

The dorms not separating Angie and Paige might be part of that. Hard to be disappointed that your son and his girlfriend might be living together out of wedlock when your daughter and her girlfriend would almost certainly be doing the exact same thing, just based on the hypocrisy of it all.

We were all hoping we’d hear from the universities in January. National Merit Finalists would be announced in February and, unless something bizarre happened, we were all going to be finalists. We knew that already. Knowing it and seeing it in writing are two very different things, though.

By the time we finished dawdling over tacos and went home (dropping Paige and Jas off along the way), it was getting towards nine. Mom and Dad would already be in bed. Angie and I decided to do the same. Separate beds, tonight.