Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 131: Tick, Tick, Tick
Sunday, April 27, 1986
Besides our studying, we made the usual calls today. There was very little new going on, which was probably good. Most of our friends were busily studying one thing or another. It wasn’t an exam week for all of them, but semesters were drawing to a close everywhere, if at differing rates.
All of the couples were doing fine. There continued to be no engagement news for Amit and Sheila or Connie and Jimmy, but it sounded like they were going strong. Dave Mayrink and Caroline were similar, but I wasn’t expecting an engagement as quickly. And Marshall said things were great with Sandra, but they’d been together only a fraction as long as the others.
Admittedly, I’d gotten engaged to my ex-wife after less time than Marshall and Sandra had been together, but those were different circumstances. Not only that, but I would hardly use that as an argument for others to get engaged more quickly. I didn’t think our troubles had anything to do with the speed of our engagement, and waiting was highly unlikely to have changed my mind, but it still wasn’t something to emulate.
The best news was Professor Berman’s continued good health. Oh, he had plenty of things wrong with him, as did Grandmother, but they were — for the moment, at least — manageable. I was pretty sure we were waiting for a bolt out of the blue, not a slow and inevitable decline (as I expected for Grandmother), but maybe he’d dodged the bolt out of the blue and would have a slow decline himself. I doubted it, but all we could do was cross our fingers and continue to wish them long life and health.
We didn’t try to call Grandma, and hadn’t in quite a while. We had never been as close, and the odds were high that she would have no idea who we were if we called. Mom said it was more common that Grandma thought Mom was one of her sisters rather than her daughter. At one point, Grandma had apparently even thought Mom was her mother, and couldn’t be convinced otherwise for the duration of that call.
Jess’s call was interesting. She and Laura were leaning ever more to going to the Amnesty concert. It would be their chance to be with us at one of these high-profile shows. Not nearly as high-profile, but still. It would also be a chance to do some touring in New York City together, and Jess really wanted to see a Broadway show or two on Broadway. It actually might matter to her more than to any of the rest of us. As a working actress, she might actually perform on Broadway at some point. Some film actors did that, and she had the chops to do it, most likely.
It wasn’t entirely inconceivable that Jess could wind up with a coveted EGOT. She had done television and likely would again at some point. Laura’s Jess had clearly been Oscar-worthy. Given the right role, I could see her getting a Tony. The Grammy was maybe the hard part, but a major soundtrack song or cast album could do it.
Besides that, she said her agent had what had been described as ‘a serious nibble.’ None of us, including Jess, knew what that meant, but it seemed to mean that someone had pushed her to someone else for a significant role, and that first someone had then told the agent about it. The actual person with casting authority hadn’t approached her agent, but no one knew if this was a project happening in a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. Or a few decades, for that matter.
Even a rumor is good, and it felt like there was a ‘Jessica Lively is getting some attention’ rumor around. That might make her ‘in demand’ and thus easier to cast. Who knows? It would be nice, if true.
We went over things in the early evening. Everyone agreed: it was just Jas, Angie, Paige, and me going to Berkshire Hathaway’s Shareholder Meeting this year. This time, though, we were flying. It just didn’t make sense to go straight from our last final on Friday to the meeting on Tuesday. It was a two-day drive unless we were a bit crazy, and everything would just feel rushed. Instead, we could fly up on Sunday or Monday and come back later in the week.
I was in charge of booking the flights, naturally. That would need to be soon. And we would need to tell Dad and Mom to expect us to be away. They would understand, though.
Things were light this weekend, but that was expected. Only a relative handful of schools were holding proms now, after all.
The final tally was three couples dancing in Texas, all at schools that already allowed it. There were eight couples not in Texas, and five of those were after one or another of the PROMISE volunteers helped talk the school administration into not fighting it.
They had also gotten six calls from local news outlets and provided some soundbites and a lot of background information.
Odds were that more kids had danced than that, but these were the ones we knew about. The change in the world was, honestly, pretty staggering, though only those in the inner circle knew that.
In a year or two, given the pace we were on, this wasn’t even going to be ‘news’ except in small towns or conservative areas.
Just enough mention was being made of Principal Riggs as a ‘pioneer’ in this area that I imagined his legacy was already cemented. It wasn’t even the thing he should be known for, most likely, but it was going to be out there.
When I could, I should probably check in with him. I was happy he’d gotten so much credit for things that, in most cases, weren’t his ideas at all. He deserved the recognition, really, for the things he had done. Another principal could easily have turned our best efforts into a train wreck or forced me to actually go to war.
Overall, quite a few more couples got to enjoy their prom than would have happened in another universe. Yet another ripple, if one we only partly considered ourselves responsible for. Claiming ownership of it would be slighting Anne and Natalie. They had plenty of agency over their own actions, after all. Perhaps they never would have done this without us, but that was (and would forever be) an unknown. It made more sense to us to treat it as if this was always their path in this universe.
Monday, April 28, 1986
I got American Express working on plane tickets during lunchtime. We wanted four round-trip tickets from Houston to Omaha, leaving Sunday, May 18th or Monday, May 19th, and returning anytime on Wednesday the 21st or Thursday the 22nd, depending on fares. Friday the 23rd was out because Angie and Paige were leaving for the Seiler family trip on the 24th. They might not take a yearly trip, but this year was the ‘showing off the rings’ trip.
Everyone imagined there wouldn’t be family trips next year. The families would, by and large, come to us, not the other way around.
We planned to tour the Omaha art museum either before or after the shareholders’ meeting, but that was all of the sightseeing we needed. If we had more time, we would certainly use it.
They promised to get back to me quickly, and I was sure they would.
We had a somewhat mysterious message waiting on the answering machine. It was from a Mark Blodgett, who identified himself as a producer for CBS. He wanted one of the four of us to call him back. I tried, but he was already gone for the day. No real surprise, since it was almost six on the East Coast.
I volunteered to call back tomorrow midday. The girls might be right there — we often ate lunch together — but I would do all of the talking, most likely, then explain it all later.
Tonight was back to dance lessons. I wore my kilt, as planned. Debbie loved it, and said I looked ‘simply dashing.’ She tossed in a reference to ‘Brigadoon’, which prompted us to tell much of the story of why that musical was so important to us.
We did some of the explaining while dancing. She had me moving, and it felt good to just follow her lead and also try to carry on a conversation. I wasn’t about to give up leading in general, but I could do this, and do it well.
Angie and Paige got in on things. Both of them could lead, but neither was terrific at it. Angie was better, without any question, but it felt like that was her role. It really wasn’t at all fair to say she was ‘the man’ in the relationship — that’s more than a bit sexist, I think — but she had been the one to propose and was often the one to lead. Someone had to do it, after all. That didn’t make that person a ‘man,’ though. Just ... something.
The ‘leader?’ Maybe, but it was role-specific. Paige was the leader sometimes. Angie was at other times. Sometimes those times aligned with traditional male roles, and sometimes they didn’t.
Jas got into the spirit after a bit and decided to learn how to lead. Maybe the two of us would do a dance or two where she led. If she wanted to, awesome! All the more fun for both of us.
Tuesday, April 29, 1986
Another ghost of the ‘past’ came back to haunt us. Angie and I just looked at each other when we saw the headline ‘Soviets Report Nuclear Reactor Accident.’
This was one of the annoying ones, honestly. I could have told them how to avoid Chernobyl at any point in the past five and a half years. Oh, not in detail, but I knew they’d thoroughly bungled the test they were conducting. There had been no possible path for me to get this information to anyone who could do anything about it, though. No Soviet nuclear official would listen to an American on this subject, and I had no way to establish bona fides.
Oh, if I’d had the absolute right name (I hadn’t), and could get them on the phone (how?), and if I spoke Russian (I only knew a few dozen words), I could have told them the Brezhnev - Andropov - Chernenko - Gorbechev sequence. That might have done it. But, most likely, I would just get that right person arrested by the KGB while putting myself on the KGB’s radar.
There was no feeling of blame. Doing something had been impossible. Still, people were dead and dying, and more people would be dead and dying, because of that accident, and I could — in theory — have prevented it. So could have Angie and probably Laura.
We would still be talking about Chernobyl decades later. It was that bad. I wished them well at dealing with it, but doubted the course of history would be significantly different in this universe.
Very few Americans likely had any idea where Pripyat, Ukraine (Ukraine SSR, for now) was, but I knew the ghosts of Pripyat were, again, a part of the world. I wished them a peaceful rest, and hoped not too many more would join them.
Before my call, I wound up talking to both Darla and Amy, and we put together something of a plan for the week.
Tomorrow night, Aggie Cinema was showing a thoroughly family-friendly collection of Looney Tunes cartoons. Everyone wanted to go (even Jas, who would be coming from the Women in Communication meeting).
That was going to be a non-date date with both Darla and Amy, plus a bunch of other people. The odds that I would wind up sitting between Darla and Amy seemed very high indeed.
Thursday night, Cepheid Variable was showing ‘Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’ (yes, that’s the full and correct title). Amy chose that one for an actual date. Darla might have, but Amy suggested it first. She also somewhat ‘owned’ Cepheid Variable movies. That was likely to be a three-person date, since Jas wanted in on it.
For Friday, Darla and I would figure out ... something. That something might well involve her sleeping over. It also might well involve Jas, though I hadn’t told Darla that. We had some more things to try there, and all of us knew it.
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