Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 122: Hot Fun in the Sumnertime
Sunday, April 6, 1986
Everyone slept a bit late, I think, since we didn’t really have to be up before brunch, which was scheduled for eleven. Once the four of us were dressed, we opened the connecting doors and hung out for a bit. Amy seemed perfectly comfortable around Darla, and vice versa, so that went well. I didn’t see them becoming best friends, but it was possible, at least.
The hotel provided a copy of the morning paper, and it confirmed what we’d already guessed. Guinness was calling this ‘the largest outdoor concert in history.’ Their number was 1.6 million, currently, which seemed higher than in my first life. Maybe we’d changed something by saving Challenger? Maybe just luck? Who knew? And maybe I was wrong about that first-life estimate.
The phrasing amused me. What indoor concert could have more than 1.6 million people? Where would you hold it? It certainly made sense that you would have a different category for indoor concerts, but why not leave the other one as just ‘largest concert?’
Ah, well. In any case, we’d set a record. Two, counting last year’s Big Kiss. This one wasn’t going to stand, I was certain. Jarre himself would break it repeatedly. But it was the largest to date, and that was something.
There were virtually no reports of mischief or mayhem during the concert. One might think burglaries and the like would have gone up in places where the police couldn’t possibly have responded, but that seemed to not be the case. Good for Houstonians!
We checked out around ten-thirty and headed for the Warwick, arriving at ten-fifty or so. Amusingly, Clara and William, Darla’s parents, were already there. She hugged them and they resumed some conversation from yesterday.
There were no looks or gestures in my direction that I noticed, so I figured I was safe.
Camille and Francis arrived shortly thereafter, followed by Candice and Sherry and their parents. Cammie, Mel, Emily, the Wonder Twins, and the Rileys were the next to arrive, followed by Mom and Dad, then Tony and Jean.
Needless to say, the Warwick did not have any tables for twenty-seven people. We wound up with four tables for eight. Unfortunately, they weren’t close together. That necessitated a lot of juggling, but we wound up with arrangements that worked for everyone well enough.
I made a point of saying hello to the Matthews and the Rileys. At this point, we weren’t really close, but I would always be special to the Matthews, and I might one day father Mel’s children (not that I imagined her parents had the slightest notion of that thus far).
Dad was glad to hear things were going well in Austin. I stayed vague, but there was, I think, an implication that more would be shared soon. By now, actually naming P.C.’s Limited was likely the next step. That would start dominoes falling, though. If I (or we) owned enough to justify a seat on the board, that gave Dad a guess. There were no public-facing earnings statements or the like, but the papers already knew sales had passed $75 million in a quarter. Dad wasn’t Angie, and didn’t have the research skills she had, but nearly anyone could look at the numbers and guess we must potentially be worth millions, if P.C.’s Limited kept going and didn’t stumble.
That would undoubtedly affect something. What it would affect was anyone’s guess, but we would likely have that conversation a bit earlier than planned.
Of course, Dad still couldn’t know we owned roughly $1 million in Microsoft stock. That was a closely guarded secret under an incredibly restrictive NDA. And he also couldn’t know that our estimate of the ten-year growth (or so) for those shares would put us over $100 million.
What he could guess was that P.C.’s Limited might go public. That would be a big deal. It would probably be more of a big deal than Microsoft sending us on our way to a tenth of a billion.
Some of this tied back into a version of Dad’s point: you can never have too many friends. We were in on the Microsoft IPO in such a big way thanks to being Michael’s friend. That put us two degrees of separation from Bill Gates, and being Bill’s friend would be a big thing by itself. It might be a huge thing if it affected things for Laura.
Most of this was background thought for this lunch, but that’s the way my life was, now. Thank God we’d started opening up to Dad over the past year! This was going to be quite awkward, anyway. It would have been dreadfully awkward otherwise.
We said our goodbyes around two, after a very leisurely brunch, and promised to be back no later than May 19th. Finals ended on Friday the 16th, but final grades weren’t due until the 19th, and we might stay long enough to check them. Easter was still possible, too. We hadn’t decided either way.
We hadn’t gotten the date for Berkshire Hathaway’s meeting yet. Our guess was May 21st. If it was earlier, we would either miss it or change plans accordingly. Even if we had to fly, though, we would be in Houston long enough to see Mom and Dad and ‘the in-laws’ before heading out.
We dropped off Amy and Darla at their dorms. Along the way, we discussed our next dates. Amy was angling for Thursday or Friday. Darla would likely prefer Friday, but honestly, anything could work.
Once they were safely back home, we went home, too, then got settled. Tony and Cleo protested our absence mightily and would only be appeased by quite a bit of petting and some cat treats.
We made an abbreviated round of our weekly calls. Grandmother and Professor Berman had already heard about the concert. The Boston contingent were all sad that they’d missed it. So were Lizzie and Janet.
So was Laura. She had, by far, the most insight into it. Jarre wasn’t much on her first-life radar, though, and she’d only been somewhat aware of Ron McNair and his saxophone. Still, it was a big change. She was perhaps more concerned about inadvertently squashed butterflies than we were, but it was a concern for all of us.
I didn’t get either Michael or Dave Mayrink. Michael might still be getting back from Houston, though, and Dave might have gone to the concert as well.
One of the historical sidelights was that, even in this life, Dave and I had played a fair bit of laser tag in junior high. Jarre’s music was very commonly used as background sound by laser tag venues.
Michael called around seven. He’d been there, had loved it, and was glad he’d gone. Lee was, so far, doing a great job, and everything was very encouraging. We talked for about twenty minutes, with Jas hopping on and saying hello as well.
Angie and I headed to bed around ten. As usual, she was undressing within seconds after we’d closed the bedroom door.
“So,” she said. “That was ... something.”
“It was very much something,” I said.
“We’ll talk more once we’re snuggling, but ... stuff hit me. Nothing big, but ... you know.”
“Maybe the same stuff that hit me, but maybe it’s totally different.”
“Probably a mix of both,” she said, wiggling out of her panties and now completely naked.
“Woo-hoo!” I said.
She giggled and took a bow.
“Potty! Then talking.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
I changed, got ready for bed, and soon enough we were snuggled up.
“I had a thought during the concert. It’s one that will sound creepy, but I don’t mean it that way,” she said.
“Oh?”
“We’re in ‘Groundhog Day’.”
“Yeah, that’s creepy,” I said, chuckling.
“I don’t mean it the bad way. The ‘we’re doing this again and again’ way. What I mean is, we’re making changes and, mostly, they’re making things better. Which is what Bill Murray had to do. Ron McNair’s speech made me think. Here’s a guy who’s literally only alive because of us — unknown to him, but still — and he’s telling one-point-six million people to ‘make the world a better place.’ We saved Curtis’s life, and he wrote a court decision making life better for hundreds of thousands of people. It’s ... it’s actually working. That doesn’t mean it’ll keep working, but ... it’s working.”
“I had some of that. Coming at it from a different angle, but similarly.”
“We still have to be very careful about butterflies. And we should have to. We don’t want the universe to just decide every change we make is ‘all for the best,’” she said.
“Yeah. We don’t. And ... yeah, it’s working. Unless it isn’t, anyway.”
She giggled a bit and said, “What are you thinking?”
“‘Count no man happy until he is dead.’ Sure, it looks good now. What if massively accelerating P.C.’s Limited made future Michael an evil oligarch instead of mostly a decent guy? What if Curtis’s decision leads to some massive anti-gay backlash?”
“Okay, fine. Perfectly fair! We can create doomsday scenarios with the best of ‘em. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Me, neither,” I said. “But ... who knows? That’s mostly the point. Remember hubris.”
“Hubris, schmoobris,” she said, waving a hand. “And ... no, I’m not serious. You’re right. We don’t want to get too full of ourselves. Still...”
“Still, you have a point, I agree. Right now, it looks like it’s working, and I’m not really thinking we’re risking hubris. It’s on the list of things to consider, though.”
“Yeah, it is. Anyway ... it just felt like, ‘We did this thing to be nice, and see how it’s paying off!’”
“We did the thing with Michael to get rich,” I said.
“And it worked! I mean, it actually worked. It’s no longer hypothetical. We can get rich-er, but we’re de facto rich now. Ten years before we can reasonably touch most of it, admittedly, but we’ll be able to function off loans before that.”
“Except that assumes we didn’t break Microsoft. Hubris!”
She giggled and nodded.
“Fine! Seriously, that’s a good point. I take it on faith that they’ll do as well as they did in my first life — and yours. But...”
“We both do.”
“Also, yes, we did the thing with Michael to get rich. But we also did it carefully in hopes that it wouldn’t make him worse off. So far, we look to have overachieved,” she said.
“At this point, if everything crashes and burns, it’s probably fair to say we’re in a ‘Count no man happy’ scenario where the universe was playing Lucy with the football.”
“Dangit! I hate when Lucy does that! Snotty bitch! Anyway, not buying it until it happens. And, hell, if it does happen, instead of trying the kick and landing up on my ass, I’ll land in fucking Gatesville.”
“Nah. Not guilty by reason of insanity. Because we’ll go a bit nuts,” I said.
She giggled a lot.
“Fine! Yeah. That’s fair.”
“We’re really agreeing. It’s just ... lots of chickens getting counted. Some super-promising eggs, but...”
“Definitely. Still, we have to tell Dad more,” she said.
“It’s on my list. Before or after Berkshire Hathaway, depending on the timing.”
“Warren needs to get that letter out!”
“Might be in the mail tomorrow,” I said.
“We can hope!”
“Sleep?”
“We should, and I’m fairly exhausted.”
We did, rubbed noses, said ‘I love you’ to each other, and then were asleep quickly.
Monday, April 7, 1986
Mel was the one to check the mail, and her first comment was somewhat expected. She said, “Hey! The Berkshire Hathaway letter is here!”
Angie pounced on that, of course, and so did the rest.
Meanwhile, Mel said, “And ... who is Gordon Summer? And why is he writing the four of you from England?”
Paige and Jas looked confused. Angie did, too, but the lightbulb went off for her a second before it did for me.
“Do you mean Gordon Sumner?” she said.
“Oh! Yeah, it does say ‘Sumner,’” Mel said. “Doesn’t answer my question.”
Paige said, “Did we meet him somewhere?”
By this point, Jas had it, too, while I was trying not to explode.
Angie said, “We did. The last thing he said to us was that he had to go talk to Phil and Branford.”
Paige’s eyes went wide, and she said, “You mean...?”
“I think I do,” Angie said.
“What?” Mel said.
Cammie, who’d been in the kitchen, came in and said, as deadpan as she could, “Sting. Sting is writing to our housemates.”
“Sting?” Mel said, almost dropping the letter. “The Sting?”
“That’s the only Gordon Sumner we met,” I said, chuckling now. “So ... probably.”
Cammie was giggling, too.
“I live in a world where Sting is writing letters to the people I love,” she said. “This is ridiculous, in the best way!”
“Open it!” Paige said, giggling.
Mel passed it to Angie, who opened it and took out the letter. After a second, she looked up and said, “So ... first, he hopes we’re doing well.”
“We are!” Jas said.
Everyone laughed at that.
“He and some other artists are playing some shows in the US for Amnesty International. He said he’s not trying to get us to donate more, but we impressed him. And Bob, who’s going to be at one of the shows. If we go to any of them, they’ll upgrade us to VIP seating and give us backstage passes. That includes up to one guest each. He says right here that he knows we’re couples, but couples have friends, too.”
“Holy cow!” Paige said. “Well, I guess we’re going to see a concert. Where are they?”
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