Chapter 76: Recurring Drama

Sunday, March 24, 1985

When we both woke up (a bit late, naturally), Jas rolled over and put her head on my chest, looking up at me.

“I just want to check,” she said. “You’re not upset, right?”

“Nah. Biology happens. We’ll have time.”

She giggled a bit.

“Okay, so, that’s a good sign, but I meant about me.”

“No!” I said, a bit surprised. “Why would I be?”

“I got here really late, woke you up, all that. It’s the first time that’s happened, really.”

“I literally did the same thing with Claire the other week,” I said, chuckling.

“Nah. I was awake, and you weren’t all that late. Not really the same.”

“It feels the same to me.”

She hugged me.

“Well ... good,” she said. “It really was good, and I don’t mean the sex.”

After a second, she giggled, and said, “Wait! That came out wrong. I do mean the sex, but I also...”

“I think I get it,” I said. “The sex was good, but it’s the stuff around it you’re referring to.”

“Yes!” she said, nodding. “As much as anything, it’s ... pretty much the rest were either drama or debate girls in one way or another. This is new. It’s also ... adult. Different.”

“I think this is us, going forward. The occasional someone, here and there. Maybe I’ll fall right into bed with someone, no questions asked. Maybe you will. Who knows? Maybe we’ll both seduce the babysitter...”

She giggled quite a bit at that.

“Hey!” I said. “It could happen!”

“The poor girl!” she said, still chuckling a bit. “Trying to ‘keep’ both of our ‘secrets.’”

“I’m pretty sure we would explain it,” I said.

“Yeah. Less fun, more ‘us.’”

“Anyway, maybe that. Whatever. You’re right — it’s good. Claire is good. Katy is good. There’s a bit of ‘forcing it’ with both of them, maybe. Like, you found Katy because ‘she was there’...”

I was looking at her when I said it, and she nodded right along.

“And you also somewhat pointed me to Claire because ‘she was there.’”

“There was something there,” she said. “Claire was interested. You were, I think, interested, too.”

“A bit, maybe. More after you ‘suggested’ things.”

“I am good at that!”

“I’m not complaining,” I said. “Just that I think maybe the next ones will be more ‘organic,’ less ‘Where’s someone we can experiment with?’”

“That makes sense,” she said. “I can go with that.”

“So, back to the original question. No, I’m not upset in the least, not about any of it. Not you, not Katy, not Claire, not Claire bowing out last night...”

“Good! Maybe it was silly to ask...”

“It’s never silly to ask,” I said. “Communication, communication, communication.”

“Right!” she said, giving me a quick kiss. “How could I forget that?”

“I don’t think you really did,” I said. “After all, you asked.”

“True enough!”

Not surprisingly, all of the others were up before we got up. There were a few leftovers, but Jas and I mostly made our own meal.

I called Claire after breakfast, just to make sure she wasn’t too down about things. She wasn’t. Maybe a bit, but I could understand that. Putting myself in her shoes, well ... I had a steady girlfriend, plus there was Jess. Claire, on the other hand, had been celibate for months with the sole exception of roughly three weeks ago. Pretty much every girl in my life confirmed that girls do in fact get just as horny as guys do. They just show it differently. Given that, Claire being a bit grumpy about her body betraying her wasn’t much of a surprise.

Of course, I didn’t say any of that. Saying any of that was probably a recipe for a breakup, and maybe some slapping along the way. Instead, I said I hoped she was feeling fine and told her I was looking forward to seeing her soon.

We talked for a bit before she left to work on some homework. I was pretty sure she was telling the truth and not just trying to get off the phone.

I worked on homework, too, for about three hours. That lasted until Paige came upstairs and said, “Angie and I are trying to learn poker. Like, real poker, not just strip poker! Good poker! Some of you come help!”

Mel and I wound up being the ‘helpers,’ with Jas and Cammie spectating. None of us were ‘good,’ and I’m sure Mel and I had very obvious ‘tells,’ but that was fine. This was weak, penny ante poker, and it was in a good cause.

The differences between the two were obvious. Angie played more conservatively, with a focus both on ‘playing the odds’ and ‘playing the players.’ Paige, meanwhile, was more inclined towards bluffing and taking risks, but she was definitely playing the players.

After we finished, I said, “Okay. What motivated this?”

Paige grinned and sang out, “Money money money money, money!”

Angie giggled.

“Some of it’s that. It’s ... while we were kicking ass at Ogre, someone said something like, ‘You should play poker! It pays better!’ We decided to give it a shot. It might just be for fun, but even so, we’ll keep our clothes on next time.”

Paige gave her a look.

“We’ll lose them when we want,” Angie said.

“Better!” Paige said, giggling. “More than half of the fun is losing your clothes!”

“I’ll take your word for that!” Cammie said.

“Seriously?” Paige said. “It’s not like we haven’t seen you starkers a time or two!”

Cammie blushed.

“That was...” she said.

Mel gave her a look.

“Okay, dammit! It was fun! When it’s all ‘look and don’t touch,’ and I get to look, too, yeah, it’s fun,” Cammie said, chuckling.

Mel grinned, and said, “It is! I mean, I get to see you naked fairly often, but it’s kinda fun when it’s a game like that. Or, you know, social. Like a hot tub or something.”

Cammie blushed a bit more, and said, “Okay! Enough! I’ll play next time! As long as the card sharks actually lose, though!”

“You just want to see us naked,” Paige said.

“And why wouldn’t I?” Cammie said.

“She has a point,” Mel said.

Everyone agreed. She did.

Monday, March 25, 1985

It turned out we didn’t need to decide on whether or not to see ‘Carnival’. Per the Batt, the organizers had canceled the show thanks to low ticket sales. Apparently, they needed to nearly sell out Rudder Auditorium to make it financially viable, and they hadn’t come close.

In my opinion, expecting a relatively obscure musical with a cast from a state university to sell out on a Monday night, especially with fairly limited advertising, was pretty foolish. They might have scraped together enough people to fill the auditorium with a major crowd-pleaser, but ‘Carnival’? We were amongst the more enthusiastic musical theater fans in Aggieland and we hadn’t been able to decide whether or not we cared enough to go.

Oh, well. There would undoubtedly be many more musicals in our future.

In better news, Villanova had finally won a sizable victory, beating #7 North Carolina by twelve.

Two games to go. We could still be out a pile of money, but so far, so good.

Something had been bothering me for a while, and it firmed up into a fully-formed thought today.

We were, at my best guess, roughly ten months away from the Challenger disaster. It had been, in my opinion (and in that of many others), an entirely preventable disaster. NASA had multiple opportunities to delay the launch and plenty of good reasons to do so, yet they launched anyway. The failure was both highly specific to that launch and widespread and systemic in how NASA evaluated risk.

The problem, from my perspective, had to do both with the failure and the launch. Had the failure led to some major change in planning and execution which saved many future lives, that might be different. The Columbia disaster, though, was caused by a similar lack of systemic thinking.

In both cases, parts of NASA were aware of the problem. In both cases, though, the risk assessment had been done and that was that, even though new evidence had turned up, evidence which should have brought the risk assessment into question.

Preventing the Challenger disaster was something we could do, perhaps. There were a number of approaches we could take. All of them involved risk, though. Significant risk.

I would need to talk to Angie and Laura first. Perhaps the disaster hadn’t happened in their universes. Perhaps they would be staunchly opposed to getting involved. Or, perhaps, one or the other would have a solution I hadn’t considered.

The others didn’t need to know. If we did nothing — or if we did something and it failed — their knowing the specifics couldn’t do much good. On the other hand, Paige and Jas (at least) deserved a say in anything we did. It would be life-changing for them if, somehow, Angie or I was discovered trying to play Good Samaritan.

Or, perhaps, playing Cassandra would be the more appropriate reference.

Claire met me outside psych with a hug and a kiss. This time it was just me and her. Mel had an appointment at the Health Center to check her toe and Cammie was going with her. That was in the opposite direction Claire and I needed to go.

“I’m sorry about Saturday night,” she said.

“You know I’m not upset,” I said.

“I am, though!” she said, giggling a bit. “Still!”

After a second, she added, with a grumble, “Stupid timing!”

“Things happen. Expecting the world to run according to your schedule is a fool’s errand. We’ll do something fun soon.”

“Not too soon, unfortunately!”

I hugged her.

“Soon enough.”

We headed into class, sitting next to each other and holding hands.

After class, she said, “Anyway, besides that, I had a lot of fun.”

“Me, too!”

“Had anyone told me just a few months ago I’d have a fun weekend at a science fiction convention while dating the boyfriend of a friend of mine, with her in attendance, I would have laughed in their face! Life is strange,” she said.

“Life is stranger than nearly anyone can imagine, I think.”

She paused, and then said, “That sounds like there’s a story there.”