Variation on a Theme, Book 7
Copyright© 2026 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 3: Plans and Reunions
Tuesday, July 8, 1986
My pager went off late in the morning. It was a New York number with the ‘non-urgent’ code. When I returned the call, Karen Hopkins answered. She said they’d gotten a call from a New York Times staffer named Carl Berriman. Not anyone significant (or, at least, Karen didn’t think so), but it was the New York Times, after all. For the moment, Karen’s answers had seemed to satisfy Carl, but she wanted me to know she might pass him along to me if he had follow-up questions.
I was ready, if he did. Or, at least, I thought I was.
Once we got together with Angie and Paige, we caught them up on the return of Nancy to our lives.
Angie’s reaction was fairly predictable.
“It’ll be great to talk to her again!” she said, grinning. “I really liked her. She was good for you, and good for you exactly when you needed someone to be good for you. And ... it meant a lot that I was ... me ... to you, by then. There was so much I wanted to share about Candice, but couldn’t. Unfortunately, not the things that would have mattered. I was as blind to those as you were. But, Nancy? She fit. Would she fit now? God only knows.”
“The Hollywood thing could be cool,” Paige said. “I sometimes wonder how I would do. Or, well, any of us. But we’re where we belong. Still ... you know. Some stunt casting thing where they bring in people not known for acting? We could do that, maybe.”
“Definitely!” Jas said, grinning. “As long as we don’t lose those skills. Though ... we would probably all need to practice.”
“Rusty as heck!” Angie said. “But we could get there.”
“Absolutely!” Paige said.
“So ... we’re not getting together with her anytime soon, right?” Angie said.
“Nah,” I said. “When we have a reason to go out there. But I dunno when that’ll be. Certainly not for the Rose Bowl this year.”
“France!” Jas said, grinning.
“And France or England, or both, for us,” Angie said. “I think we can count that as set, by now.”
“Right now, wedding stuff!” Paige said. “It’s a year away, but ... in wedding terms, that’s kinda... now!”
“Wedding stuff!” Angie and Jas cheered, with me not far behind.
We spent much of the day checking with the various wedding-related people we’d liked in the previous round of interviews. We also decided on July 18th for certain. After checking, Cammie and Mel had decided to bite the bullet and go with May 23rd for their wedding. Mel was still worried about wedding freak-outs during finals week, but knew we would all help. And that our help would be both reasonable and actually helpful, which isn’t true of many sources of wedding help.
We called Emerson Unitarian and spoke to one of their staff, who was very happy to have firm dates for our weddings. She encouraged us to keep them in the loop as our plans continued to firm up. We promised we would.
Inspiration hit late in the day, and I called Lee, catching him at his desk.
“Hey, Steve! Should I be nervous?”
“Not about this, no. This is not a ‘me’ thing, it’s an ‘iceberg’ thing.”
“Do tell!” he said, chuckling.
“A few weeks ago, I wound up talking with a friend of mine about patents. It hit me that, if you’re not already, you should have at least the 386 team go through everything they’ve done and look for novel, non-obvious innovations. Then file on anything and everything. The others are going to come along right behind you. Patent litigation stinks, from everything I know, but having a patent portfolio would be insurance. It might also be a marketing point when we get to that IPO we’ve been talking about.”
He said, “That ... is a great thought. It really is! I thought about it once, but it totally slipped my mind after that. You’re right, I think. Unless Michael is strongly opposed, I’ll make that a priority. And, if he is, I’ll figure out why, because I can’t see that making sense.”
“Me, neither.”
“Thanks! That could turn out to be handy. I know they came up with some things. I’ve also had some conversations that went along the lines of, ‘We did this thing this way because it’ll work and is straightforward. But we already have this clever idea to do it a different way. It’ll go in the follow-up products.”
“Get ‘em writing, Lee! I haven’t written a patent, but I don’t think it’ll tie them up for weeks,” I said.
“I’ve seen a few. A day or two, maybe three, for the more obvious ones. And we can offload a lot onto junior engineers. And the cleanup on the lawyers. Computer-specific patent lawyers are expensive, but a patent suit would be worse.”
“Definitely!”
“I’ll let you know. Thanks again!”
We talked a few minutes more, and then he was off, hopefully to make it actually happen.
Cammie called just after dinner. We had yet another call. Kelly Peterson, a reporter for The Battalion, wanted to talk to Angie, Paige, and me. Apparently, the holidays had slowed everything down, but they wanted to do a piece about ‘60 Minutes’. It had started with focusing on the proposal, but they’d become aware of Reagan and everything was expanding.
I thanked her, and we talked for a bit. After we hung up, I checked with Angie, Paige, and Jas. We all felt it would be better to do any interviews after Janet and Lizzie’s wedding. There was too much going on, and we might want to reference the wedding as well.
Jas was pretty sure she knew Kelly, but only vaguely. She was pretty sure Kelly was a journalism upperclassman, probably a senior. It also brought to mind that Jas might want to talk to her department office about this. Offhand, I doubted many A&M journalism students had been on a national news show.
Once we had a plan, I called Karen Hopkins, leaving her a message. I left Kelly a message, too, telling her that Karen would probably call her, and that I would be happy to talk to her, but it might be a while before we could sit down for an interview.
I called Jess in the early evening. Fortunately, she was home. She thought the whole thing with Nancy sounded interesting and wanted to talk to her soon. As I’d said, maybe she could help, and maybe she couldn’t, but it was the right thing to do. And, with all of the personal connections involved in how Hollywood functioned, helping someone now might pay off later.
Her audition was now definitely, very likely, almost certainly, going to be on Wednesday the 16th. I might get a chance to catch up with her about it, but the odds were she wouldn’t know anything until we were back from Lizzie and Janet’s wedding.
I wished her the best of luck and promised to check in soon.
After that, I gave Nancy a quick call and left her a message, letting her know Jess had promised to call.
As we had before, we were officially all having dinner with Darla. In practice, though, Jas, Angie, and Paige sat away from us so we could talk.
Talk we did, too. After spending just a bit of time talking about Reagan, most of it was about Hank. The July 4th visit had gone very well. Darla hinted pretty clearly that, if there had been a place, Hank could have talked her into going there and seeing how many bases were in play, with a home run being entirely possible. There hadn’t been, though, and I think both of them were happier for it. It would have changed their timetable, for one thing. And it would have put some pressure on Darla to decide she’d made the right decision in regard to Hank.
Talking might be annoyingly slow at times, but it was getting the results both of them wanted. What more could you really ask?
After dinner, Darla headed to the Nguyen house along with Jasmine and me. Angie and Paige were spending the night with the Seilers.
Camille rolled her eyes playfully at us, while Jas winked back. Francis was nowhere to be seen. From everything I knew, he was feeling considerably better. Camille reinforced that, saying he was just off doing some paperwork.
Tonight was just Darla and me, and we broke no new ground. At this point, we probably wouldn’t, either. If Hank didn’t work out, that would change the equation. Alternatively, if there was something Darla wanted to try so she knew what to tell Hank about it, that was fine.
Left to myself, though, I had no reason to try anything more. We had plenty of options on the table, and it felt like Hank should be the future.
We had an interesting conversation after we’d finished and were snuggling for a bit. Only a bit, because Darla had to get home before Clara realized this dinner might have had an unusually appealing dessert.
Darla said, “Looking forward to Lizzie and Janet’s wedding?”
“Of course!”
“A little bird told me you’ve been encouraged to ‘nail’ a bridesmaid,” she said, giggling a bit.
I chuckled and nodded.
“I have. Of course, knowing them, they might not have any bridesmaids who are interested.”
“Nah,” she said. “There’s one who I know is interested. She also won’t, but she’s interested.”
“Um ... well. No comment?”
She giggled some, nodding.
“You can’t answer that, but ... yeah. Anyway, besides her. Assume there’s someone bi or even straight. Would you?”
“I don’t know. It depends a bit too much on the circumstances.”
“Would you have, before me?” she asked.
“I...”
I hesitated. That was an interesting question, and it deserved a bit of thought.
After that thought, I said, “I tend to doubt it.”
“That’s where I was. Which means I changed something in you. Or ... well. I might say you changed a lot of things in me, but you really just brought them out. And this is maybe the same thing in reverse.”
“It could be,” I said, nodding. Then I added, “What do you think about it?”
“I’m not likely to nail any bridesmaids,” she said, giggling.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, chuckling myself.
“About you?” she said.
Then she bit her lower lip, looking thoughtful.
When she finally spoke, she said, “I think I like it. It’s kinda complicated, but ... yeah. I really had to search my thoughts. And ... maybe I might be the tiniest bit jealous? But it’s a sort of ... I dunno. Good jealousy? In that part of me would love to stay with you. Except ... it’s better if I don’t. Better for me, I mean!”
“That all makes sense, I think,” I said. “Not that feelings have to make sense.”
“True!” she said. “They don’t. But it helps when they do.”
“It does.”
We talked for a bit more. In the end, I felt fairly certain I could nail some bridesmaid (if the situation came up) and not hurt Darla’s feelings. She would be there, after all, and that time could have been hers. Love might add, but time divides, after all.
I could certainly say she had no claim on my time, and that would be true. Fair, even. But truth and fairness are no defense against hurt feelings. I had decades of practice at seeing that in action, after all.
Wednesday, July 9, 1986
We spent another day on the wedding trail. Today bogged down enormously when Jas and Paige brought up the subject of bridesmaids’ dresses. Would they be the same, since it was a double wedding? Different, since there were three brides? Would Angie even have ‘bridesmaids?’ How would you differentiate Jas’s bridesmaids versus Paige’s? Did that even make sense, since they knew nearly the same set of people?
We didn’t answer most of those questions. Jas and Paige would sort it out. But we did wind up looking at a lot of dress options.
Yes, even me, though my opinions were certainly the least important.
Fortunately, there was no call from CBS. It looked like the whole thing was going to blow over. I was certain Meg would have some things to say, and so would Tom, but they might not know yet. We would tell them, though, even if no one else did. If I didn’t, Angie, Jas, or Paige was certain to. Or Cammie, or maybe even Mel.
We took time out from wedding plans to visit a Foley’s department store and shop for Janet and Lizzie. In some ways, it felt silly to pick out a gift from a list for people we knew well. But these were gifts they felt were meaningful, so that’s what we did. Gift registries were a good idea, and the four of us agreed that we would have one. Maybe a weird one, given that we had a house fully ready to go and had been living together for nearly two years already. That, and our financial means would likely be wildly different by the time we graduated.
Still, picking out pots and pans and stoneware seemed like the right thing to do. We picked out a few other things, too, though. Angie spotted an art print with a tuxedoed figure dancing with another figure in a pink dress. Neither had a well-defined face, and there were no particular gender cues beyond the garments, making it a potential match for Lizzie and Janet. A bit later, Jas found a pink flower vase that just felt like Janet.
Both were small. We could bring them with us, wrapped — easier than it would have been after 9/11 — and include pictures of the gift list items inside the wrapping paper, or in the card.
When we arrived at Mom and Dad’s, we had a surprise. It was, in retrospect, more of a surprise this hadn’t happened before.
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