Variation on a Theme, Book 7
Copyright© 2026 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 34: Retreating
Friday, September 26, 1986
Lexi and I woke up early enough to have a solid ‘round three’ (or, really, three and four). Thankfully, we had enough time for breakfast before I had to run. We packed our bags and brought them down to breakfast with us to save time.
At breakfast, Lexi said, “That was the best I’ve ever slept with someone. Meaning, actually slept! Not the first, but the best.”
“I can’t quite say that...”
She giggled and nodded.
“But I slept really well.”
“You have a total advantage there! Living together with Jasmine for over two years is impossible for anyone to live up to, given how perfect you two are for each other. That really didn’t surprise me. I had you two figured for wedding bells before we even had lunch together! Now ... Angie and Paige? That was a shock! A wonderful one, but still! You missed so much drama freshman year!”
“I’ve heard some vague stories,” I said.
“You don’t want details. Trust me! I’m sworn to secrecy, anyway. And, I mean, it was never ... well, malicious, or anything. She was selfish, and a brat, but she really meant well. Other people are equally to blame. ‘Other people’ including me, in one case. Nothing I’m broken up about, but ... yeah.”
She paused and said, “Someone could probably make a pretty good movie out of Memorial Drama, 1980-1984. Especially if Jess’s career pans out. Which it looks like it’s going to!”
“There probably is. And something about Lizzie and Janet’s prom, and...”
“God! Who knew Memorial was going to turn out to be totally cool and amazing? Not me. I mean, I was always happy to go there, but the stories! The people!”
“Definitely!”
After I’d paid the check, we checked out of the hotel, then headed out to the parking lot.
“Let me know when you’re back in Austin!” she said, after I’d put her suitcase back into her trunk.
“I’ll do that! Though the next time will be for the game, and I don’t think I’ll have any time then.”
“The game barely counts, I agree. Sometime when you have time.”
“It’ll happen, most likely!” I said.
She hesitated a bit, and then said, “Jas says it’s okay to say this. So, I’ll say it. I love you, Steve. Not ... you know. Not hearts and flowers, or anything. I want a guy of my own. Maybe with a relationship kinda like yours with Jas, but ... someone who is, to me, what you are to Jas. But, still ... I do love you.”
I hugged her, looking into her eyes, and said, “I love you, too, Lexi. In the same way. I want you to have your guy. It can be tricky to navigate, but ... say, Darla. I still love Darla. Darla still loves me. But Hank is her guy, and that’s how it should be.”
“Exactly! I think ... well, if it had been okay to say that back in 1982, I would’ve gotten it wrong, even if you didn’t. It would have been too much. We did the right thing then. This is the right thing now.”
“I agree.”
We kissed again, hugged, then parted, her climbing into her little Civic and heading off. There was always the chance that this was the last time, but that was true with everything. Things happen. She could find a guy who couldn’t share. Jas and I could change our terms. Or ... planes crash. Cars crash. And, less dramatically, people change.
I suspected Lexi was part of my life for the long term, though. Or should be. Maybe ‘just’ as a friend, but that was the most important thing.
I got in my car and drove the short distance to Robert Mueller Airport (aka Austin’s Old Airport, to me). After parking in long-term parking, I made it to the terminal well before my flight. I had no truly bad memories of this airport, thankfully. It was small, crowded, and awkward, but nothing notable had happened here. In fact, I wasn’t sure there were any notable bad stories with my ex-wife at airports. It seemed improbable — we’d argued in so many places, and travel can be stressful — but I couldn’t remember one, and we’d been in quite a few airports together.
I could remember quite a few bad stories about airports. Those were all of the form, ‘To hell with you! I’m going to just fly home! Drop me off at the airport!’ That had never actually happened. In at least one of those cases, I would have arrived home first, and it was a ten-hour drive from where we were to the house. Being dropped off at ten at night at a rural airport in Alabama sounded like a terrible idea. Fortunately, she had relented before we even reached the exit that would have taken us to the airport. I likely would have insisted either on not dropping her off or waiting with her. The first would have been, legally, kidnapping. The second might have gotten us divorced over a decade earlier.
As it turned out, I was the first of the P.C.’s Limited contingent to make it to the gate. The only people at the gate when I arrived were a family with two small children, and I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be part of our group. I could see Jas, me, and our as-yet-hypothetical small children traveling together for business, but we would likely be outliers.
Along with New York, which had worked largely because I was already there, this was just going to be Lee and me, from the Board. That would likely become routine. Michael and Lee would probably often need to travel together, but they wouldn’t need me there.
I might not be as necessary once there were more board members. Maybe I would, though. Most of those other board members would have their own major commitments. For the time being, I didn’t, since ‘student’ only counted so far.
Lee was the first to arrive. We shook hands, and he said, “Should’ve known you’d be early!”
“Wouldn’t do to be late,” I said. “Especially when the company put me up for the night.”
“I have stories...” he said, shaking his head. “Later. Much later.”
“I’ll look forward to hearing them!”
He was right about the ‘later’ part. Almost immediately, a young woman arrived, wearing a navy blue pantsuit and smiling. She looked not much older than I was.
“Hello, Mr. Walker!” she said. “And ... Mr. Marshall?”
“Lee!” he said, shaking hands. “Steve, this is Kim. Kim Roell.”
“As Lee said, I’m Steve,” I said, shaking hands, too. “I’m not much on titles, yet. Could be because I’m still in college.”
“Nice to meet you!” she said. “With Mr. Dell not coming, I thought I was going to be the youngest one on this trip!”
“Nah,” I said. “I have that cornered for the time being.”
Lee chuckled and nodded.
Before we could talk more, more people showed up. Like Kim, Trevor Hawkins was from sales. Then we had two from manufacturing: Bryan Blair and Pam Richards. The last two were from the quality team: Susan Pellington and David Gold. All of them were, at a guess, in their late twenties to late forties, leaving Kim and me the youngest in the group.
Along the way, we had several rounds of reassuring everyone that we were all on a first-name basis. I could see their hesitation. There’s a natural distance between the company president and everyone else. And, even with me just twenty, there’s also a natural distance between a board member and personal friend of the founder and CEO and the others. I’d nominally hired Lee, after all.
But I was also twenty. And, as I hastened to point out, the one least aware of what the issues were. If I had insight, it was the sort of insight born from being away from the weeds and focused on the big picture.
That, and having lived through the rise of Dell before, but that wasn’t something I could share.
We talked for about fifteen minutes. Mostly, it was the others talking amongst themselves. I just listened. Still, by the time we boarded the plane, I was reasonably confident we would work together pretty well. It seemed like a group of sharp, focused people. Some had more experience than others, but sometimes fresh eyes are what you need. Mine were some of those, but others would be good.
I wound up in an aisle seat, sitting next to David Gold and across from Bryan Blair.
Once we were settled, David said, “I’ve seen you at the big events. Michael gave the bare bones of it. I’m curious, though. How did you wind up investing and on the board of directors?”
I gave a brief version. Meeting Michael in high school, and our mutual desire to get into some part of the computer industry at the ground level. The auto accident (which let me mention Jas, and our being engaged) and the settlement. Michael having cash flow issues, us finding out while visiting, and a quick negotiation to invest, followed by my acting as a sounding board.
“Pretty cool,” Bryan said. He’d been following along as we talked. “You’re clearly comfortable speaking in front of crowds. Not my thing!”
David nodded. “Nor mine.”
I smiled. “Three and a half years of competitive speech and debate in high school. I should be comfortable! I’m a bit of a cheerleader for it, honestly. You should check out something like Toastmasters. Speaking is honestly less scary than most people think, and it’s a really useful skill to have.”
“I’ll think about it,” David said. “You’re a persuasive guy!”
“Guessing you were good,” Bryan said.
“We did okay,” I said, smiling.
“C’mon! That’s holding out on us. How okay is ‘okay?’”
“Fine,” I said, chuckling. “My partner Cammie and I won the national championship my senior year.”
“That’s pretty okay,” David said, chuckling.
“It was,” I said. “The way I see it, a few teams were good enough. We got the right breaks, but we were able to take advantage of them because we put in the work. I think that applies to a wide range of things. Gotta put in the work, but you also need those lucky moments. Honestly, that’s Michael and P.C.’s Limited. He’s smart, tough, and works incredibly hard, but it’s taken some luck to get to where things are now.”
“A good way to think about things,” Bryan said.
We talked a bit more along the way. David was in his early thirties, married, and had two kids. Bryan was in his late twenties and dating. Both of them were amongst the many who were very happy they’d found out about a little company named P.C.’s Limited and taken a chance on working there. I had no idea what their circumstances were, but being on this trip suggested they were likely highly valued employees.
After the short flight to Dallas, we switched gates. The lapse in conversation gave me some time to put this into context.
It was people like these who had become the ‘Dellionaires’ in my first life, and who had, collectively, gone on to be a big part of transforming Austin from a relatively sleepy college and government town — with a bit of a high-tech history going way back, granted — into a major tech center. Along the way, they had also donated enormous sums of money to a wide variety of charities and non-profits.
That was something I didn’t want to break, right up there with Michael’s future. And Lee’s, though I saw opportunities to make Lee’s future better. For that matter, I hoped Dell’s overall place in the computer industry wouldn’t change except for the better. If Dell were to collapse, it might stunt Austin’s growth and thereby change an enormous piece of the future I knew. I would hate to be responsible for such a thing.
Similarly, Dell’s philosophy — both that of the company and the man — needed to stay relatively consistent. Michael had prioritized both ‘playing fair’ and ‘winning.’ He had been a great example of what we’d said long ago in study group: work hard, play hard, respect people, be ethical. He had always stressed giving back to the community and supported an inclusive workforce. Oh, one could point to flaws, no doubt. And, perhaps, there had been others found after I’d left that universe and arrived in this one. I would never know.
But that was part of why this worked. I wasn’t trying to put a square peg into a round hole. The goals we had weren’t Michael’s goals, but our goals were broadly compatible in many ways. That mattered. We had lucked out in having a future billionaire just one grade ahead of us, but I could have named quite a few billionaires I would never have wanted to partner with. I couldn’t have partnered with some of those people and remained the sort of person I had pledged to be.
Dell’s rise had, of course, happened before, with no help from any of us. But now we’d gotten involved. That made us responsible for anything we broke. If trips like this were part of the responsibility — and they were — I would be there, happily. Hopefully, Dell would be even better in this universe. If it was, we would have overachieved, and that would benefit everyone, not just us.
Well — everyone in our community. Undoubtedly, some others — people at Compaq, perhaps? — would lose. The PC industry wasn’t entirely a zero-sum game, but it was relatively close to one. Did we care? I was pretty sure we didn’t have the luxury of caring. To truly care, we would need to bow out, and it was already too late for that. Debate was a zero-sum game, and I’d stormed through that knowing full well we were ‘displacing’ people who’d won in my first life. Undoubtedly, someone else had played the roles I’d played in Drama. Had held the scholarship I held now. There was no end to the changes.
The answer, as always, was that this was, by necessity, my universe and Angie’s universe just as much as it was anyone else’s. We had nowhere else to go, nor had we asked to be here. We could — and should — set high ethical standards for ourselves, but we couldn’t refrain from intervening. Simply by existing as we were now, we were intervening every day.
We landed at San Francisco International around one-thirty. Since we’d all brought carry-ons only, we were on the bus only about twenty minutes after landing. Potty breaks had taken a bit of time, which was no surprise at all.
Fortunately, mid-afternoon traffic on a Friday wasn’t too bad. I was pretty sure it would have been much worse when I’d lived in the Bay Area, but that was nearly a decade from now.
I had wondered if we would travel via the Embarcadero Freeway, which I’d never seen, but we didn’t. Perhaps that was just as well. It was a reminder that I would need to watch events very carefully in 1989. The Loma Prieta earthquake would, presumably, be the same in this universe as in others. I made a mental note to check that with Angie and Laura.
If it was the same, it would matter enormously whether the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s were in the World Series, as they had been in my first life. The timing of the game had likely saved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives. Freeways that would have been packed were nearly empty instead. In the places those freeways collapsed, most likely everyone would have died.
Yet another distraction, but an important one.
Almost half of those on the bus hadn’t crossed the Golden Gate Bridge before. I had, of course — in two lives, even! Lee had, but Kim, Bryan, and Susan had not. They enjoyed it, and so did we. In one sense, it’s just a bridge. But it’s iconic, and even people who knew little about San Francisco knew about the Golden Gate Bridge.
After that, it was off through winding roads and past forests, fields, and vineyards before arriving at the Vintner Inn at four. It was a charming place. Rooms were in small buildings and felt more like cottages than standard hotel rooms. We each had our own room, and Lee gave us an hour to settle in and explore. We would meet for dinner in a private room of the restaurant, then move to the meeting room we would use on Saturday as well. Sunday was back to the restaurant for brunch and discussion.
After calling home, then Mom and Dad, letting everyone know I’d gotten here safely, I unpacked. I had long ago learned the importance of hanging my clothes. After that, I changed into a long-sleeved burgundy shirt, khaki slacks, and loafers. My cap went on my head, and I headed out into the cool California afternoon. It really was cool, too. Not jacket weather for me, but I was pretty sure the girls would have been pulling out sweaters or jackets. Even at easily seventy or more pounds below my first-life college weight (and well over one hundred below my peak), I still ran a bit hot.
My room came with a wine bottle, which went into my suitcase. We would likely be given plenty to drink at meals. The girls and I could share this one.
I set off for a stroll, enjoying the grounds and thinking. Along the drive, I’d gotten an outline of the problems P.C.’s Limited was facing, but Lee had asked us to wait until the evening to actually think about it, on the theory that part of why we’d come all of this way was to clear our heads and get out of our usual thoughts about their issues.
Naturally, my thoughts went where they often did. What would the girls think of this place? Would Jas and I vacation here? Angie and Paige, too? Amy? Jess? There were so many wonderful places to go, but this would probably be on my list, at least for now.
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