Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 151: A Day Off
Thursday, June 12, 1986
We pretty much immersed ourselves in The Met for most of the day. That’s not hard to do, really, and we were all art museum enthusiasts.
During the day, we joked off and on about the possibility of one or more of us attending the Met Gala one day. If so, what would we wear? The Met Gala was pretty much known for outlandish outfits, after all. Did everyone wear something outlandish? None of us knew.
We might all be celebrities or celebrity-adjacent, though, and we would probably be patrons of the arts as well. That made us candidates to attend, at least.
Things to think about. One day, we might be here (or, in fact, anywhere) under wildly different circumstances.
During the day, we again called everyone who was traveling tomorrow. Everything seemed good, and we were all looking forward to seeing each other. If anyone’s flight was canceled, we would update as necessary using pagers.
I took time out to check with American Express and Sue Ann. This time, Sue Ann had the better price. We would leave Houston late in the day on Wednesday, July 16th, and return on a mid-day flight on Monday, July 21st. Francis had already confirmed we wouldn’t need to be back before then for the France trip, so we were good to go.
After we wrapped up our day at The Met around four-thirty, we took a taxi to an Italian restaurant not far from the theater we’d picked for ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’.
During dinner, Jas said, “So ... it’s pretty obvious that you and Angie think this is a really good movie.”
Angie giggled and nodded.
I said, “I sure do, yes. But I’m going to try my best not to spoil anything.”
“Good call!” Paige said.
“It’s one I’ve been waiting for,” Angie said. “John Hughes had some great movies in the mid-80s. This is definitely one of them.”
“Who’s in it?” Jas said. “I mean, I know Matthew Broderick is.”
“The others are ... well ... not ‘unknowns,’ but there aren’t any really big stars besides Matthew Broderick. I can name some of them, but that’s almost ... I dunno. Coincidence? The movie holding up for so long that names stick in your brain?” I said.
Angie nodded.
“I’m not sure I can name anyone else except for Ben Stein,” she said.
“I don’t know who that is,” Paige said, giggling.
“You probably wouldn’t,” I said. “I’m not even sure if he’s been in movies before this. Maybe? The guy is really interesting. He’s a lawyer, and he was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He can also speak in a voice that rivals Wednesday Addams for lack of expression.”
All three girls giggled, with Angie nodding quickly.
“Fortunately, Amy sounds nothing like Ben Stein!” she said. “Stylistically, though? She could match up. Oh, and I thought of one other person. But it’s a cameo, mostly. Important, but a cameo.”
“I know who you mean,” I said, nodding. “I agree. He’s only on screen for a few minutes, but they matter.”
“We think you two need to call this a date,” Jas said, grinning at Paige. “And we ‘virgins’ will have our own date.”
“Works for me,” Angie said, grinning at me.
“Works for me, too!” I said.
We kept talking over dinner, of course. Jas and Paige tried to wheedle comments about the movie out of us, but we refused to answer anything.
The best they got was from Angie, who said, “Seriously? It’s a lot of fun. It really is. But, for me, the best part is that you have a lot to think about. Honestly, that’s true of ‘The Breakfast Club’, too, but this is even more so, to me. So many unanswered questions.”
“I guess the other thing is, you’ll recognize a fair number of the filming locations,” I said.
“Oh, hell!” Angie said, giggling. “I love that his movies are set in Chicago. But, yeah, we went to a few of them during Northwestern, or on other trips.”
“I’m good with that!” Paige said.
“Definitely!” Jas agreed.
We walked from the restaurant to the movie theater. Everyone commented that, so far, New York had seemed fairly safe and not too unfriendly. Oh, there were some gruff people on the streets, and many people who were just minding their own business with little concern for anyone else, but some people smiled and nodded, or waved, or whatever.
It certainly wasn’t Houston or Chicago. Both of those were known for being, in general, friendly and welcoming. But it was fine. I imagined we would be back here plenty of times, and we might as well get used to it now.
Unless, of course, things went ‘wrong.’ Or even ‘sideways.’ We were pretty sure we knew what we knew, but that’s when hubris sneaks up and destroys you. Always best to remember that, unlike Ferris, we couldn’t plan for everything and cover every contingency.
Heck, even Ferris couldn’t do that, in the end. It took some unlikely events for him to come out on top anyway.
‘All is for the best,’ indeed.
The movie theater seemed nice enough. We got tickets for the seven-fifteen showing. Since we’d had Italian food for dinner, no one wanted popcorn or even sodas, so we just settled into our seats.
Angie got a laugh when she said this would have been a terrible date film ‘back in the day.’ We hadn’t known Jas or Paige that far back, but they completely sympathized with the idea of a movie you could ignore being a very good dating experience. They hadn’t had the same issue we had with lacking an appropriate venue for assignations, though, but they sympathized with our difficulties.
That got us talking, of course. All of us believed we would let our kids have as much freedom as they could handle. If they were adult enough to have sex, they were also adult enough to do so responsibly and ethically. Screw that up, and things that would have been fine would be off the table.
At the same time, we all felt that we would probably have to parent in entirely different ways. If we were wealthy and in the public eye, our kids would pay a price for that in terms of how closely they would be monitored. I doubted they would ever be free to just hop on their bikes and take off to the mall for a day, or hop in their car and drive around unhindered.
On the other hand ... maybe? Maybe they could have unobtrusive security people who followed them around and were explicitly told not to tell us what was going on unless there were real concerns.
We had years to figure this out. But it pointed out again both how little we were prepared for this and also how much we were prepared for it in comparison to most newly wealthy folks. At this point, Michael probably hadn’t realized that his kids were never going to have the middle-class school experience he had, nor that they would necessarily have far less freedom than he’d had at the same age. He just wasn’t there yet.
Angie and I had been preparing for this for six years, and we still weren’t anywhere near ‘ready.’ That’s maybe the thing, though. You don’t have to be ready. You just have to be ready to become ready.
All side conversations went away the moment the lights dimmed for the feature. Angie and I held hands and let ourselves fall into the movie. Jas and Paige held hands, too, and I was pretty sure they lost themselves in it just as thoroughly as we did.
Each of us probably had a unique perspective on the movie. Jas and Paige’s would be the closest, but they were still different. The Seilers would have objected to some of Ferris’s behavior, while I suspected the Nguyens wouldn’t have batted an eyelash.
The Marshalls, of course, would have strenuously objected to our ditching school, lying to the principal, and so forth. But that hardly mattered to Angie or me. We were closer, thanks to shared parents, but we had also had vastly different first-life experiences. I’d been a parent to kids Ferris’s age. Angie had not. She had lost pretty much all of her freedom, while I hadn’t.
Fortunately, the movie was — as best as I could remember, anyway — exactly the same one I’d seen ‘before.’ Sooner or later, that wouldn’t be the case. It already wasn’t the case for ‘Back to the Future’, but it was close enough that the differences didn’t throw me. At some point, though, I suspected there would be a movie that was half the same, half different, and I would have to be very careful about what I said about it.
Everyone bounced a bit at the scene at the Art Institute. Why wouldn’t they? We all loved the place. Wrigley Field got plenty of interest as well.
The biggest difference in reaction was, undoubtedly, the destruction of the Ferrari. Angie and I knew it was coming, while it was a complete shock to Jas and Paige. They knew we knew, of course, and some very interesting looks were exchanged between the four of us.
The audience actually clapped at the end, which I appreciated. Jas and Paige started to get up when the lights came up, but Angie and I quickly urged them back to their seats. One does not leave ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ until Ferris himself tells you the movie is over and it’s time to go, after all.
Of course, we talked about the movie as soon as we left the theater, and pretty much all the way back to the hotel. Hopefully, we didn’t spoil the whole thing for the cabbie. We were speaking quietly, though, and he had something in Spanish playing on the radio, so it was probably fine.
Jas started it, saying, “Okay! I see why you both like it so much. That was a lot of fun.”
“It was!” Paige said. “Damn! Even I couldn’t have gotten away with that! I wouldn’t have even tried something like that.”
“I feel bad for Cameron,” Jas said. “He might think he can handle it, but destroying your dad’s favorite — and super-expensive — car? It’s not going to go well.”
“Let’s table that,” Angie said, after a slight pause. “Too much ... stuff.”
With that scene off the table, we spent a lot of the cab ride rehashing the plot and talking about Chicago locations. It was funny that Jas and Paige were now connected to Chicago in their ways, too. For all that only Angie had really lived there, we had all spent enough time there to matter.
Once we got back to the hotel, I found a message from Lee waiting for me. Goldman was a go, with a reasonably-sized line of credit and a loan on slightly better terms than Chase Manhattan had offered. There had also been some hints about Goldman wanting to be considered for any future IPO. It was late enough that I just called the front desk and asked them to leave Lee a celebratory message.
After that, we picked up the movie conversation. This time, things turned more personal.
“So...” Angie said. “I wanted to get back to your comment about Cameron, Jas. That’s where I was in 1986. ‘Poor Cameron! He’s going to really get it. The whole thing sucks! Ferris shouldn’t have messed with the car.’”
“Meaning you don’t feel that way now,” Paige said.
“I don’t,” Angie said. “And ... this might be one of those been-there-done-that things. It’s ... I mean, sure. Your parents can make you miserable. Sometimes, really miserable. But the thing a lot of people missed, I think, is that Cameron was already miserable. Heck, he might well have been clinically depressed at the start of the movie. He’s going to catch hell from his dad, but he’s also going to come out of it stronger. The flip side is: if Ferris doesn’t intervene, maybe Cameron kills himself in a year, or two, or three. Or maybe he just goes on to lead one of those ‘lives of quiet desperation’ Thoreau wrote about.”
“Pulling out the Thoreau!” Paige said, grinning. “Reverend Mark would be proud!”
“Thoreau is a Unitarian saint,” Angie said, giggling and nodding.
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