Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 138: Plans Coming Together
Sunday, May 11, 1986
We had church in the morning, and tried to make most of our usual phone calls in the afternoon, but today was mostly a study day. Over dinner, we did a quick check. Pretty much everyone felt ready for their upcoming finals. It felt somewhat like how we felt before the proposals, albeit with what were really lower stakes. No one felt as if they weren’t going to do well, but we would still hate it if we bombed a final.
Or, for the most part, even wound up with a B.
The most important phone calls were the ones for Mom, Camille, and Jean. We couldn’t take them out for Mother’s Day, but we could wish each of them a happy day, and we did.
We also faxed back the completed questionnaires. Marco, Anne, and Natalie had gotten theirs to Angie late in the week.
The questions on ours ranged from some really mundane stuff (‘What was your high school GPA?’, ‘Where have you lived?’) to topics that could have gotten book-length replies (‘What do you think about the history of the gay rights movement and where it is heading now?’).
We gave brief answers to everything. They could ask all of the follow-up questions they wanted.
Mine included several questions about Reagan. Had I known he was going to quote me before he did? Had we spoken about it? How did I feel about his leadership on gay rights issues? Did I think he was living up to the promise of the statement he’d quoted?
I went easy on the President, because I thought he really was doing a decent, if not inspired, job. He definitely was doing a better job on AIDS than my first-life Reagan had, and had done little to embolden or empower the anti-gay wing of the Republican party. That was ‘good enough.’ Too much, and that wing of the party would turn on him, which would be messy both in the short and long term.
I still felt like I shouldn’t get much coverage in the segment. Some was probably appropriate. They needed someone straight as an entry point for the majority of the population, and I imagined each segment might have that. But this wasn’t my story, and I didn’t want to pretend it was, nor try to tell other people’s stories. I had my own story, though, and I could tell that.
A number of the questions were along that line: Why was this personal for me? Why had I gotten involved? How did it feel to be a straight person publicly aligned with gay people? So on, and so forth.
We would see what they picked up on.
Even with the need to get sleep before finals, Paige and I wound up sleeping together tonight. And, given the two of us, there wasn’t going to be any actual sleeping without some love-making first.
It wasn’t an overly aggressive night, but Paige convinced me that ‘fast and hard’ would get us to sleep that much faster. She did have a point.
A very good one, too!
We both agreed: Angie and Jas were probably also taking similar measures to ensure a long, quiet night’s rest. As they should, of course!
Monday, May 12, 1986
Finals week started off well, as far as I was concerned. Today’s finals were Analysis of Algorithms and Business Finance. The first was, as expected, a cakewalk. If there was an amusing sidelight, it was that Angie was probably going to outdo me in a Computer Science course. That would be true even if I hadn’t been sandbagging. I had, but just a tiny bit. She hadn’t, and this was, at heart, a math class.
The second was harder, but nothing either of us (or anyone in the Brigade, I was pretty sure) would have to worry about. We’d covered this material backward and forward.
Amusingly, my pager (on silent) went off during the Finance final. I didn’t check it (that might have gotten me in trouble), but I did right after the final. It was Lee Walker’s code, which seemed pretty interesting. I hadn’t gotten the May update from Michael yet, either. The weekly reports mostly made up for that. Perhaps this call would explain the timing, though.
When I got home, I called him back, getting Victoria, his secretary, instead. I only knew her name because she gave it to me. We would have to get to know each other at least a little, probably.
She promised to have him call back, and was as good as her word. The phone rang less than fifteen minutes later.
We spent just a few minutes catching up, and then he said, “Look, the reason I called is to let you know we’ve made what amounts to a fairly significant decision. It’s unanimous, but we want you in on the bigger ones.”
“Of course!” I said. “Happy to.”
“I decided yesterday that Jay Peterman has to go. He’s just not meeting my minimum standards for a CFO. That also means Karen will be out. She won’t stay if he’s out. Neither of them knows yet, but the plan is to tell them tomorrow, unless you have any other thoughts.”
“I barely know him, but Michael’s complained off and on, and I can’t say that my interactions with either of them were all that positive. They were very brief, though, so my opinion doesn’t matter much.”
“It does, though. If you had a reason to keep them...” he said.
“Lee, I’m out of the loop. They could have been the best thing since sliced bread roughly a year ago, when I met them, and turned into slackers in between. The reports are fine enough, and I imagine Karen’s involved there, but I don’t see anything that gives me information on what they’re doing. No icebergs spotted from my vantage point, at the last.”
He chucked and said, “Thanks! Yeah.”
“There’s one I’ll warn you about, though,” I said. This was thanks to Angie, who’d given me the necessary background information.
“Oh?” he said. “All ears!”
“If you’re going to act as interim CFO, that makes sense. Someone’s gotta do it. Hire, though, Lee. Don’t make this another hat you wear for months. I’m saying that because it sounds like something I would do, and I know it’s a mistake. Get someone good in there. Just make sure they’re good.”
He chuckled loudly.
“Guilty, probably! My standards are high, and I meet them. Delegation can be a pain in the behind. But ... you’re right. There’s enough work here that I shouldn’t pile that on my plate long-term.”
“How’s the big push on the 386 going?”
He chuckled even more.
“Well, the reason you haven’t gotten an update call is because of it. Michael’s hoping for a surprise piece of good news.”
“I’m in the middle of finals week here...”
“Damn! I shouldn’t have called!” he said.
“Nah. It’s fine. Really! I’m doing great and not worried at all. But it means I’m not sitting by the phone waiting for an update.”
“When’s a light day? If you have one?”
“Thursday afternoon. I’m free from one to six or so,” I said. “But, honestly, tomorrow is fine, too. If I’m home, I can talk. If I’m not, the pager’s set to vibrate.”
“I’ll tell him, and you’ll get a call soon, either way.”
“Sounds good!”
“Thanks, Steve! We’ll be moving on this. Honestly ... yeah, this economy is lousy, and the banks are playing it conservatively, but we should be able to get much better loans than we’re getting, and that should have been Jay’s job. I’ve already proven I can do better, which was the last nail in the coffin,” he said.
“Makes sense. Money’s been an issue since day one, and it’ll continue to be. And I know neither of you wants another funding round just yet.”
He laughed loudly.
“Nope! A small one about a year from now, or a bit later, would be good. Then the big one. Nothing before that! At least, that’s the plan.”
“That’s what our local prognosticator thinks.”
“That you?” he said.
“Nah. My sister Angie, who I mentioned before. You’ll like her, I think. She’s the numbers genius here, and I’m actually not being hyperbolic there. The math department thinks she’s a legitimate genius, and the business school doesn’t know what to do with her except let her do what she wants.”
He chuckled and said, “It still sounds a bit like mixing physics and finance.”
“Pretty much that. She’s fairly good with physics, but sneers at engineering math.”
He laughed more loudly at that.
“Gotta meet your whole group, I think!”
“We’ll have to get over there. Sometime. The summer is shaping up to be busy, but we’ll find a time.”
“Looking forward to it! I should run. We need to make sure we’re ready for tomorrow. Jay’s going to be upset, but ... what can you do?” he said.
“You need the right people in the right roles.”
“Absolutely!”
He hung up, and I shook my head. It wasn’t a surprise. If there was a surprise, it was that it had taken this long.
That, and that Lee might well listen to me about not keeping the CFO hat indefinitely. Having said that now, I could nag him later if he wasn’t relinquishing it.
I already knew he was a workaholic. That probably wasn’t going to change. But this might change it a bit, anyway. Hopefully, that was a good thing. There were good CFOs out there, and I trusted them to hire one.
Or maybe that was ‘us.’ I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find myself in those interviews.
That made me grin a bit. Sure, I was on the Board, so my presence would make sense, but what if we invited a certain brilliant young woman along, too? She even had a P.C.’s Limited badge. She could certainly count as a ‘special advisor.’
Angie could charm most people and also figure out their weaknesses without them even knowing she was doing it. It might give us an unexpected edge and give her some useful experience as well.
Worth bringing up, at the least!
The invitation to Janet and Lizzie’s wedding arrived in the mail. Amusingly, we just got one, with all six names on the envelope. Janet had included a note saying, ‘You already said you were coming, but we had to send one, so we did. Yay us! Go ahead and RSVP so we don’t forget to count you!’
We put the RSVP in the mailbox immediately. It would go out with tomorrow’s mail. Not that we sent a lot of mail, but more in a week than 2021 Steve would have sent in a year.
By a solid margin, too.
There was one interesting side note to the invitation, one I shared with the girls right away. They had a room block at the Sheraton Palo Alto, and we would undoubtedly stay there. The thing was, I had been there once before (but hadn’t stayed there). As I expected, I got multiple whaps when I explained ‘before’ meant the late 2010s. The reaction turned to sympathy when I added that it was for my wife’s high school reunion.
I had no significant emotional reaction right now. They needed to know, though, in case that changed when we actually got there.
Tuesday, May 13, 1986
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