Chapter 26: Preventative Measures

Monday, September 23, 1985

This was ‘Howdy Week.’ The Batt mentioned it, and so did tables at the MSC, plus many postings on student bulletin boards.

We generally tried to say ‘Howdy’ to people we passed, in keeping with A&M tradition, but this week served as a reminder of that.

It also gave Paige an idea. It might have been what had been at the back of my mind for months, but she made it a coherent thought first.

Over lunch, she said, “So ... it’s Howdy Week, right?”

“Right,” Angie said.

“Which I support,” Paige said. “But it reminds me of a bunch of other things. You know: Homecoming Week, Halloween Week, Prom Week...”

“Makes sense,” Jas said.

Paige grinned just a bit, and said, “The thing is, that last one stuck in my head. Something ... and then I got it. What do we say about Prom?”

“It’s more cool since you guys went?” Cammie said, grinning.

“It’s way more cool since we went!” Angie said.

That gave me the clue, and I said, “It’s for everyone.”

“Right!” Paige said. “And, just like Prom...”

“Howdy is for everyone!” Angie said. “That’s awesome!”

“You’re thinking of ... like ... GSS-sponsored shirts?” Mel said.

“Exactly!” Paige said. “It’s a really simple way of saying ‘We’re Aggies, too, just like the rest of you.’ What do you say to an Aggie? ‘Howdy!’ Doesn’t matter if they’re gay or straight or whatever. It might appeal to all of the other groups too — Hispanic, Asian, whatever.”

“It might!” Angie said. “That’s pretty awesome!”

“I’m going to give it to Marco, I think,” Paige said. “If he doesn’t like it, I’ll hang onto it until the GSS President is someone at this table.”

Angie and Mel both blushed slightly, then giggled looking at each other.

“No reason you can’t both do it,” Jas said. “Just not the same year.”

“Cammie would be peeved if they did it together,” Paige said, smirking.

Everyone laughed, and Cammie said, “I would!”

There was a message waiting from Detective Frederick when we got home. He wanted the picture for his files, and wanted me to call back tomorrow and repeat my description of the perpetrator (such as it was). There was no false hope there. He made it clear this wasn’t likely to lead to any breakthroughs. He just wanted to do everything possible. I respected that, and would make sure to get him what he wanted.

After dinner, I headed to the mall, where Sears replaced the tire. In fact, I wound up replacing all four tires. They were pretty worn by this point and it just made sense to replace them all at once, especially since they had a ‘Buy 2, get 2 free’ deal going (one that actually seemed to save real money, not just buying two marked-up tires in exchange for getting two ‘free’).

In the 1980s, Sears was still a perfectly fine choice for such a thing, even if my memories were full of bad Sears stories from the 2010s. Perhaps things would be different in this universe. Sears hadn’t failed ‘naturally,’ it had been taken over by an egotistical billionaire who ran it into the ground, after all. Maybe that wouldn’t happen this time.

The advantage of picking Sears, as far as I was concerned, was that Sears stores were nearly everywhere. If the new tires failed me, I could probably get to a nearby Sears and get things sorted out.

Cammie had more good news. Everything had settled out with the first house — which was, after all, the most desirable of the three — and Camel had it under contract. The third house, meanwhile, had gotten past the inspection and appraisal steps, and Cammie would close on it Friday after classes.

The second house was still a bit of a bidding war, though. Cammie felt increasingly convinced that missing out on it would just be a minor setback, though. We had two out of three, and there would be more houses on the market.

Three, plus the house we lived in, was possibly the limit until big changes happened. The Berkshire Hathaway stock we were investing in was very close to a sure thing in the short term, and we would need a lot of ready cash right around the point where we needed to make the balloon payments.

Not to make the payments, though. We would sell off stock to do that, with the balloon payments as an excuse. The timing of those was extremely fortuitous, and we stood to make quite a lot of quick profit off of it. We would generally be fine unless someone was to ask why we sold stock instead of using our available cash. The solution to that might be obvious, though: the cash wasn’t Camel’s, it was Angie’s, and she might have had a need for it. The stock, though, was MNMS’s, and Camel was part of MNMS.

In any case, it was hard to imagine anyone who actually required a response asking anything. How could a small group of college students have possibly had inside information as to a stock market crash? It might potentially look ‘odd,’ certainly. And (while we had been generally poor at avoiding it) we really didn’t want to look ‘odd’ more often than necessary.

Still, only someone with a lot of investigative means would be able to figure out that we hadn’t needed the cash. In practice, that probably meant the government, and they didn’t authorize investigations simply because someone sold some stock a month before a market downturn when that someone could not reasonably have had insider knowledge.

If Angie got anywhere with Tom’s research, some of those questions might appear in a different form. As best as anyone understood it — and as Tom himself had pretty much confirmed, if only to us — his work had the potential to transform the market from ‘poker’ to something data-driven and broadly predictable. Manage that, and there’s a ton of money to be made. There would be questions to answer, but math is math and Angie could probably use it to explain things.

That is, if anyone — beyond math and finance PhDs — could understand the explanation.

Tuesday, September 24, 1985

Darla and I figured out our next date. It turned out that Cepheid Variable was showing ‘All of Me’ on Thursday night. Darla had never seen it. I had, but since that was in 1991, I simply said I hadn’t seen it either.

It felt like a pretty good date movie choice to both of us.

There were two showings. Since the girls and I needed to be at the UU church for our membership class, we would see the 9:45 showing. That put dinner at 8:30. Late for us, but not terribly late.

We decided to give Hullabaloo Cafe a try for dinner. Hopefully, Amy wouldn’t be upset seeing me on a date. I didn’t think she would be. But, if she was, Darla was one of the safest choices imaginable. She’d known about my open relationship for years, after all, and had even benefited from it (as much as she wanted to, anyway) in high school.

She and Louise, plus Louise’s friend Caroline, were joining us for the football game, too, but that wasn’t officially a date. Date or not, though, she made it fair clear that kisses would still be welcome. This weekend’s game was against Tulsa, and it was easy to guess there might be a considerable number of kissing opportunities.

Caroline (or, rather, her name) got some interest from Angie, but we knew the odds of any random Caroline being Angie’s Carrie were astronomically slight. Perhaps worth being aware of, but we would be jumping at shadows a lot if we went on alert every time we heard the name.

Thursday, September 26, 1985

I dropped the girls off after membership class, then parked at the Commons (going right by the Hullabaloo Cafe), meeting Darla at her room about 8:20. From there, we walked to the Hullabaloo Cafe.

Darla and I held hands and talked about classes on our walk. This was a part of dating that I found both pleasant and strangely awkward. Darla and I knew each other pretty well. Aside from the parts of my life that were a secret to nearly everyone except the innermost circle (and would remain so for a while), she knew plenty about me. I knew plenty about her, too.

Thus, there were unlikely to be any major revelations. We weren’t playing the ‘let’s see how we fit together long-term’ game, either. Dating wasn’t going to be a long-term thing. We might be friends forever, but that’s different.

In short, we perhaps knew each other a bit too well. There was little ‘getting to know you’ going on, so we sounded more like friends than potential romantic partners.

Our dating wasn’t about sex, but sex was certainly the biggest unknown. It might be fair to say it was somewhat about sex for Darla, though. She needed to figure out if she could do casual sex right now or if she needed to wait for ‘the one’ (or, at least, a plausible ‘the one’) to enter her life.

I would be fine either way. So would she. But we would both be more fine if we picked the right answer. Having sex when she wasn’t ready would likely be a regret for her. Not having sex if she was ready might also be a regret.

When we walked in, Amy was behind the counter with Trev running the register. It was the first time I’d seen them working together, but it made sense with the place so busy. She glanced my way, then back to the customer she was helping. I couldn’t see any visible reaction, but she seemed to be the sort of person who played their cards close to their chest.

Darla didn’t know anything of the incident, nor should she. So, as long as Amy was good, I was good.

We both waited in the line. When we got to the front, Amy said, “It’s nice to see you both! I hope you’ve been well.”

“I have, thanks!” Darla said.

“I have, too,” I said.

Amy gave a little smile, then said, “What can I get for you?”

She took our order with no real awkwardness. The only sign of anything was right at the end. Darla turned to go to a table, and Amy gave me a little look that said ... something. I wasn’t sure what, other than that she hadn’t forgotten and still hadn’t completely forgiven herself, either. She was ‘fine,’ but it lingered on her mind.

I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile, then moved over to Trev to pay. He remembered me, and we wound up shaking hands and chatting for just a minute. Wouldn’t want to hold up the line, but Trev seemed like a good guy and worth knowing.

Darla and I found a table and chatted while waiting for our food. The meal was good, and so was the date. Much to learn or not, I enjoyed Darla’s company and it seemed pretty clear that she enjoyed mine.

We were again hand-in-hand while walking to the movie, and stayed that way pretty much the entire time. I enjoyed the movie, and Darla clearly did, too. In fact, I might perhaps have enjoyed it more this time than ever before. After all, it involved transferring souls, and that was something I now knew to be at least theoretically possible.