Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 110: Flowers Are Red
Thursday, March 13, 1986
The morning was what you might expect. Angie, Paige, and Cammie all knew Darla well. They also knew about wolves, but wolves got no mention. Instead, they just said things like, ‘Wow, you’re really all aglow this morning!’ or ‘You must have been really tired last night!’
Paige also hit her with, ‘Is anything wrong? You seemed to be wincing when you were walking,’ which got all of the girls giggling. I had to ponder Cammie’s response, in particular. How familiar was she with the girl-badge-of-honor sore pussy? Toys could do that. Had they?
It was enough to get Darla red, and also tease back. It didn’t sound like she knew the latest with Cammie, but she responded to Paige with, “I know you’re quite familiar with the sort of wincing I was doing.”
Paige giggled and nodded.
“Fortunately!” she said.
That got all of them laughing and nodding.
The thing is, I could understand it, at least somewhat. I had been somewhat sore after that first night of wolfish delight with Darla. Well ... night, early morning, mid-morning, and so forth. There really are only so many times a guy is meant to go at a time. Maybe porn stars do more. But, if so, I don’t know how they manage. Drugs alone might keep things ready, but soreness? It’s a thing!
I suspected that — as with many things — the male experience hardly mirrored the female experience, but it did match enough for us to reach some level of common ground.
In any case, this whole thing was one big bonding moment. Darla was still not inner circle material. Maybe she would have been if Jas and I could keep her, but we couldn’t. Everyone knew that. Someone who had to move out of the inner circle couldn’t count. It would hurt all of us a great deal to try when there was little to no chance of long-term success.
After breakfast, we headed out together. Darla left her overnight bag here with a plan to come back here and ride with us when we went to pick up Amy. It amused her greatly that Jas and I were dating Amy, together, at the same time.
I think it also intrigued her a bit. Darla was very much not Amy, and Jas was, almost certainly, only going to be a curiosity. ‘Ms. Wolf’ by virtue of being Mr. Wolf’s partner, not by virtue of Darla falling for her. But that was more than enough for threesome purposes, at least in theory, and that’s what we were figuring out: how open Darla was to doing things with girls.
We would find out more in the future. There was still time, and we had a lot yet to do.
We had a message waiting at home from Penny Dryer, the CBS producer we’d met at the Rose Parade. She apologized for the delay but said it had been a lot of work getting her proposal to where she wanted it to be. She knew it was our Spring Break, didn’t want to intrude, but wondered if we could follow up on the phone at some point the week after Spring Break. Daytime was preferable, but she could accommodate evenings as well.
I checked quickly, then called her back. Unfortunately, I didn’t get her, so I left a message with a secretary saying that would work starting on Monday the 24th. I left her my pager number, explained our code system, and told her it would also be fine to page me anytime from Monday to Thursday next week. We would be on vacation, but I could return a call within a few hours in most cases. Paging me during class on the 24th was also fine — I would have it on silent, after all.
Angie grabbed Jas and me just before we went off to change.
“C’mere! Meeting!”
The meeting was brief and to the point. Angie (or, rather, MNMS) had bought 25,000 shares of the newly public Microsoft at $15.75. Also, each of us, personally, had about 500 shares purchased somewhere in the $21-25 range, depending on exactly how the transactions had been timed.
The closing price of $30.75 meant MNMS had made $375,000 today (minus taxes, brokerage fees, and whatnot). Personally, we’d made about four to five thousand each.
None of that was being sold anytime soon. If we needed liquidity, we could have it. If not, let it ride.
As Angie pointed out, this was arguably a bigger deal than Villanova. Taxes on gambling winnings were much higher than those on long-term capital gains, for one thing. For another, the upside was much greater.
On the other hand, she could never have swung this purchase without the Villanova money. That might well make it a bigger deal, depending on how you thought about it.
In any case, it was another thing off our list. Angie didn’t make a point of it today, but I knew this had been on her list since she arrived back in 1980, and it made me really happy that we’d been able to check it off so emphatically.
She had also spent a fair bit of time on the phone with the people at Goldman Sachs who were managing the IPO, and now had a few contacts there should we need any. Couldn’t hurt!
Fortunately, Jas and I were both fairly good at tuning all of the financial news out, since we had what Jas had declared to be a one-and-a-half date with Amy. If a double date was four people, it made a certain amount of sense.
Mel was working as an apprentice projectionist tonight, so we might see her, if only very briefly. She would, no doubt, be very amused by our one-and-a-half date.
We got changed, then headed off to meet Amy. When we got to the dorms, Jas decided to wait in the car to minimize the ‘Wait, Amy is dating a couple?’ vibes we might otherwise be sending. I didn’t have a problem with that, and I doubted Amy would, either.
Amy seemed to understand immediately, judging from her lack of surprise. She said goodbye to Meg, I said hello and goodbye to Meg, and we headed off to the car.
“Jas is waiting?” she said as we walked down the stairs.
“She is.”
“Yay!” Amy said.
When we got to the car, Jas hopped out so Amy could sit in the middle. That also made her the one to help Amy in, and she had no hesitation about squeezing Amy’s ass in the process.
There were people out and about, but they probably didn’t see it.
Probably.
And even if they did, it could have been ‘girls being girls.’
Probably.
We all said we were happy each other was still alive, which got a bit of a laugh. It was a serious laugh, though. We weren’t laughing at Amy, we were laughing with her, and the laugh was very much laughing in the face of death.
Amy’s emphasis on being happy that we were alive, and stressing that we should not die, had a special place of its own in my heart. It’s easy to forget that everyone you know will die one day, including yourself, but that matters. It shouldn’t make your day-to-day life miserable, but it should factor into how you live your life. If anything, the fact that I had died just added to that.
Jas and I had picked The Grapevine tonight. It felt like a nice change of pace from various A&M cafeterias.
Once we were settled, and had ordered (sandwiches all around, with a fruit and cheese plate for starters, and a glass of wine for each of us — no carding, as usual), Amy said, “I was thinking...”
“Cue the obvious joke!” Jas said.
Amy snorted a bit.
“The most usual is ‘I cannot smell any smoke.’”
Jas giggled more.
“Well, that, but I meant more like, ‘So, another ordinary day?’”
Amy snorted again.
“That ... is entirely fair! I think a lot.”
“We all do,” Jas said.
“Anyway ... in this case, it was about tonight’s movie.”
“Oh?” I said. “We usually do this after the movie.”
“No, this is different,” she said. “Recently, we have seen ‘Willy Wonka’, ‘The Wizard of Oz’, and ‘Robin Hood’. Go back a bit, and there is ‘The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T.’ Then, of course, ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ tonight. And a plan to see ‘The Last Unicorn’, too.”
“And ‘Things to Come’. And ‘A Boy and His Dog’, plus Star Wars porn,” I said, just to make a point. I could see where she was going, at least a bit.
She snorted and nodded.
“So ... I enjoy science fiction. And I enjoy ostensibly ‘kids’ movies.’”
The fruit and cheese plate arrived, and we each chose a morsel from it.
Jas said, after nibbling a tiny bit of brie, “Obviously, that means something to you.”
Amy stretched and said, “It’s ... when I was a kid — which is a strange thing to say, because I am still often a kid at heart — those were the movies my parents took me to see. I never saw an R-rated movie until college, nor very many PG-rated dramas. ‘Star Wars’, yes, but not a lot of things. They ... were overprotective. But I was unusual — maybe even ‘odd’ or ‘weird’ — and who knew how I might react? Maybe I would do better with movies aimed at a younger audience.”
“Which is a strange reaction,” I said. “But only in retrospect.”
“That is also how I came to love Wednesday Addams,” she said. “My mother felt that most television of the time that was ‘intended for children’ was ‘wholesome,’ and she thought ‘The Addams Family’ counted. Maybe it did, and maybe it didn’t. I grew up with it, and ‘Leave it to Beaver’, ‘Bewitched’ — but not ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ — and other things she thought were wholesome. And ... they were, mostly. I think my mother changed her mind on ‘The Addams Family’ later, but it was much too late.”
Jas giggled and nodded.
“We’ll likely be the more permissive parents. Yours worried more than we’re likely to,” she said.
“I told them they need not worry, but they did anyway,” she said. “Had they had the slightest idea of what was in the books I was reading, they would have been appalled. They really didn’t understand how ... adult ... some science fiction can be. The movies and shows I could see were never truly ‘adult,’ though I think some offered far more possibilities than they saw.”
“So...” Jas said. “It sounds like a lot of nostalgia. But also more, since ... we’re pretty obviously not your parents.”
“Not even metaphorically!” Amy said, chuckling. “Not at all! No. It’s more the opposite.”
“Not following,” Jas said.
“The movies I liked the most are the ones like ‘Willy Wonka’ or ‘The 5000 Fingers’. But each of the ones I have seen with Steve, except maybe ‘Robin Hood’, fit. I like the sort of kids’ movies that acknowledge children can see shades of gray. Even, sometimes, the dark and sinister. Ones where morally questionable people, like Willy Wonka, can also be the ‘good guys.’ But I can’t share that with my parents. They’re not simple — they see the grays in the world — but they don’t discuss them with me. Willy Wonka is just ‘good,’ as far as they are concerned. The scary bits, the crazy bits, are perhaps merely a smoke screen to them. Nothing bad was ever going to happen. Mike Teavee was going to be fine with a bit of taffy-pulling. Veruca Salt was never going to be incinerated. And so on, and so forth. That’s ... not life. Oh, I hope they were fine, in the sense that, if they had been real, I don’t think they deserved to die, or be permanently tiny, or whatever. But life isn’t always that way. They screwed up. Sometimes that has real costs.”
“Which makes them great conversation movies,” Jas said.
Amy clapped her hands just a little and said, “Yes! But that’s because of you. Both of you. Some people would be like my parents. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, problems are solved, and everyone lives happily after after. We can sit and talk about whether the Princes Charming are decent, upstanding guys who treat their Princesses well, or whether they’re self-absorbed twits who might sometimes smack their princess somewhere the bruises won’t show to get them to shut up and toe the line.”
Well... that was oddly specific. Another story we might get to at some point, if in fact there was such a story. I had a list of topics like that in my head. Not a long list, but this went on it.
“Yikes!” Jas said. “But I agree. Their whole thing is to be ‘Charming’. Handsome, maybe. Strong. Maybe good at fighting. Good dancer, for Cinderella’s prince. None of that says ‘loving husband,’ ‘good father,’ ‘nice guy,’ or ‘witty conversationalist.’”
“Exactly!” Amy said. “We can postulate that they are, but who the heck knows? The story says ‘They all lived happily ever after.’ That’s the official ending. Happy is happy. We’re just ... curious about maybe some alternate endings.”
“Fan fiction,” I said.
Amy nodded quickly.
“Not that I can write,” she said, “But that’s what I was kinda thinking of. Other stories, taking what we know as a jumping-off point.”
Jas nodded quickly.
“I suck at fiction, but I like the ideas. And it’s fun talking about them!”
“Eh,” I said. “What you ‘suck at,’ probably — if you do, and I mean both of you — is high school creative writing. That’s what you’ve done, and it’s a different thing. Maybe you suck at any sort of creative writing, and maybe you don’t. There’s a huge difference in being told ‘Write something clever by next Tuesday about green elephants’ and sitting down in front of a blank piece of paper and writing your clever tale. The second might be harder — and maybe difficult for an English teacher to assign, in terms of grading the results — but your green elephant tale is going to suck if you don’t like green elephants.”
They both giggled a bit.
Our sandwiches arrived, and we slowed our conversation a bit to eat.
“My creative writing teacher hated what I wrote until I figured out that it had to be ‘normal,’” Amy said. “Writing about what I thought about something was a no-go.”
“You would love Harry Chapin’s song ‘Flowers Are Red’,” I said. “And also hate it, in terms of what it says about how children are often raised.”
“I will have to hear it,” Amy said.
“Back to what you were saying,” Jas said. “We do fit really well. We love kids’ movies, but the ones that aren’t ... just...”
“Syrupy-sweet,” Amy said.
“Exactly!” Jas said.
“And science fiction,” I said.
Amy chuckled.
“I know that, too. You told me that story about waiting in line for ‘Return of the Jedi’, Jasmine. I would have loved to have done that!”
“That was so much fun!” Jas said. “But we’ll do our own cool things.”
“We already have,” Amy said, grinning. “But more. Yes.”
“Concert!” Jas said. “We have to figure out the cars.”
“Probably Cammie, Mel, Candice, and Sherry in Angie’s car,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“You have a room for me, right?” Amy said.
“We do,” Jas said. “You either get to share with Darla, or...”
“Well, maybe we shuffle roommates,” I said.
Both of them giggled and nodded.
“That will be a new thing,” Amy said. “Oh, I’ve been in hotels, but always with my parents.”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.