Chapter 67: Old Friends, New Housemates

Friday, February 22, 1985

I got some more teasing from the girls before psych. As I’d completely expected, they maneuvered things so Claire and I sat together. Once we sat down, I looked at her, winked, then nodded towards the others.

I took her little smile as picking up on my intent, so I leaned in and gave her something more like a polite good-night kiss than what we’d done last night. I’m pretty sure the whole thing surprised her — but in a good way.

Judging from some looks other students gave us, it surprised them, too. Not Matt or Lisa (they, after all, knew about Jas’s and my relationship) but some of the others were looking between me and Jas like I should expect to be hit with a frying pan (or, more likely, a psych textbook) in the next few seconds. When no drama ensued, some of them looked confused, while others just looked bored once we settled down.

Class went fine, as I’d expected. Dr. Huffines still hadn’t called on any of us as examples, but we hadn’t gotten to anything about sexuality, so there was still plenty of time for that to come up.

After class, Claire and I sat outside on a bench. It wasn’t all that warm yet, but warm enough to hang out.

“Kay interrogated me about things,” she said, giggling. “I guess Andrea — she’s the girl who passed us in the hall — tipped her off.”

“And?”

“Kay’s somewhere between horrified and jealous, I think,” Claire said, grinning. “She doesn’t get the ‘open relationship’ thing, but she agrees that you’re very cute and wants someone to ask her out.”

Sooner or later, enough girls calling me ‘cute’ might actually sink in. Maybe. For now, it was just something I scooted around as quickly as possible.

“I’m glad you had a good time,” I said. “It was a fun movie.”

“We saw a movie?” she said, winking at me.

“We ... did,” I said, pretending to not understand.

She giggled and grinned.

“You can forgive me for forgetting! I’m glad you’re a gentleman! Well, or perhaps I’m disappointed. Either way, I’m...”

She stopped abruptly and blushed.

“I’m not sure where that was going,” I said, smiling, “but I’m definitely going to ask you out again.”

“Yippee!” she said, grinning.

“Want to just walk and talk?” I said. “I have to be at Blocker in an hour for intro accounting, but Cammie will understand if I meet her there.”

Cammie seemed to guess what I was saying, even though she was standing well away. When I looked at her, she grinned, waved, and started off towards Blocker, talking with Mel.

“I’d love to! I’m just going back to Mosher, though. It’s the wrong way.”

I shrugged, and said, “A bit of extra walking never did me any harm.”

That was so not true! It was true for this me, though, so I could still say it honestly.

“Lead on, then!” she said.

“Shouldn’t that be my line? It is your dorm.”

She checked her watch, then winked at me.

“I guess we don’t have enough time for you to lead me astray. Darn!”

I chuckled and took her hand, walking slowly through the tree-lined paths. A&M had a nice campus (at least in the parts of campus where there weren’t construction cranes and bare building sites) and this was one of the prettier areas.

We talked about our high school experiences. She’d been in band, and they had been competitive. Never State Champions, but they had made it to the semifinals one year and the quarterfinals another year. Surprisingly (or perhaps not), she’d been a drummer. She made a joke about my wishing she knew more about blowing things, which I considered fairly daring. I didn’t make any ‘banging’ jokes back at her, though I considered it briefly.

She was fascinated by my — our, since I also mentioned the girls — extracurricular activities. I mentioned the national championships since she would, quite possibly, find out about them. It felt like omitting them now would come off as fake humility once she found out. She’d already seen the yearbook, after all, though it had been printed before Nationals.

Not surprising me (though I think she thought it would), she was a President’s Endowed Scholar. The girls were picky as to whom they invited to study with us, after all, and I’d seen her in action studying. Claire was sharp, no doubt about it!

She was, however, not a National Merit Finalist. She’d missed the Semifinalist cutoff by three points on her PSAT, which she blamed on not sleeping well the night before it. It felt like there might be a story there. If there was, it wasn’t one she wanted to share now, though.

We talked about our future plans. Claire was planning to get her MBA and, as she put it, “Get a cushy corner-office job at some mega-corporation and enjoy life.”

When I said I was thinking of starting my own business right out of college, her first response was, “Good luck with that!”

Her second response, though, was “Heck, maybe I’ll work for you! You guys seem to have your act together a lot better than anyone else I’ve met, anyway!”

I didn’t take the bait too heavily on that, but it was entirely possible. If I ruled out working with people I’d dated, I would have a bunch of very angry women to answer to.

If Claire and I stayed close, there might be some awkward conversations in a couple of years when it turned out I’d already started my own business. Still, my omitting that now seemed pretty defensible.

We didn’t let go of each other’s hands until we got to Mosher. When we did, we parted with a goodbye kiss that was really just a goodbye kiss, along with a ‘See you Monday!’

Inviting her out over the weekend felt ‘too soon,’ really. We both might have liked it, but there’s a rhythm to these things.

But, then, maybe that was my memories of taking everything much too fast with my ex-wife talking again.

I made it to accounting with under a minute to spare. Cammie just said, “Cutting it close!” and smirked at me. I grinned right back.

She teased me a bit about Claire after class, but it was (of course) good-natured. I didn’t have any problem with it. Teasing is good!

When we got home, it was to find a message from Jane waiting. She asked Angie to call her at home tonight.

Angie did, of course. It turned out Sharon’s therapist had gotten back to us. Sharon was ‘improving.’ Not ‘out of the woods,’ but definitely improving. The problem, apparently, was that she’d been almost too much of a model prisoner since her relapse (if it was really a relapse, something we all doubted). While her therapist believed Sharon was being honest, others whose opinions mattered (the judge, for instance) believed she might be playing everyone.

Thus, she was likely to stay under lock and key for the time being. Some of the restrictions would come off, but everyone agreed it wasn’t time for more notes, much less any direct contact.

Angie sent back the message: ‘I believe in you. Take care of yourself and trust in the people who are helping you. I’ll be here when we can be in better touch.’

We didn’t know how long it would take for the message to reach Sharon, but it would likely be faster than the last time around.

We mostly did homework or read during the evening (though there was a bit of MTV-watching), then got going around eleven to see ‘Ziggy Stardust’. Cammie and Mel had decided they were in, happily.

The movie itself was quite a blast of nostalgia. It would have been in almost any era, but I’d seen the recycling of some elements of glam rock down the road and the rise of artists who’d been influenced by Ziggy. If Angie had, she was unaware of it.

Bowie was, beyond anything else, a chameleon. It was no coincidence that one of his big hits was ‘Changes’ (featured prominently in ‘The Breakfast Club’, of course). None of them had really known Bowie’s history, not even Angie. Angie had been alive during the Tin Machine years, but she hadn’t paid attention to them. She’d missed most of Bowie’s reinvigorated second (and perhaps third) acts as well.

The songs were great. The film itself was not. It was muddled, murky, and sometimes a complete mess. Still, it was better than not having such a film.

‘Stop Making Sense’ (which was finally part of my world again, even if I hadn’t yet seen it in this life) it was not, however.

Saturday, February 23, 1985

We spent the morning doing a quick clean-up. Standards had (somewhat grudgingly, on both sides) converged to the point where Paige could clean something and Cammie could keep from re-cleaning it, while Cammie could clean something without Paige nagging about ‘overkill.’ Not that it was just Paige and Cammie — every possible pair of girls had gotten crosswise about something at least once — but they were the poster children for different cleaning standards.

It really was a considerable improvement. Some friction was inevitable, but we’d all known each other a long time and we all loved each other in our ways. Of course, so had my ex-wife and I, but so much of what had gone wrong there was simply a major lack of anger management on her part and too much passivity on mine.

Angie called a meeting about half an hour before we expected them and reminded us not to get complacent about ‘future references.’ I’m sure no one needed that, but this was a special case. Candice would be the first of our high school peers not in the loop to visit our house. There were a lot of things that might, when not examined, seem innocuous (like ‘We own the house!’) that we could not, in fact, disclose. The best we could do on that front was keep saying what we’d already said: we had an ‘in’ with the owners and they would keep rents reasonable for people who fit in with us.

Candice and Sherry pulled up to the curb just after noon. We were sitting in the living room, so we saw them right away and headed out to greet them. That turned into a bunch of hugging, which is always a good thing. I had to wonder if our religious neighbors were watching. If so, they might get the correct impression about Candice and Sherry.

“This is really amazing!” Sherry said after we’d all hugged. “The pictures barely do it justice!”

“It’s really great!” Cammie said, nodding.

We headed inside and went on a tour. Cammie, as our budding Realtor, played tour guide. Paige had no need to duck into her room and do emergency cleaning this time, but otherwise it was much like Jess’s tour until we got to the basement.

Candice and Sherry were noncommittal on the second-floor room, but that was no surprise. They’d generally preferred the basement all along. On the one hand, they might be the least ‘troublesome’ people to have living with us. But, on the other hand, putting them at arm’s length in the basement might be best. As Angie had said, they might be more risky in terms of our ‘slipping’ than nearly anyone else.