Chapter 19: Simon Says

COLLEGE IN THE 70s was a heady time for me. I was fresh out of the service and going to school on my GI benefits. I’d survived Viet Nam and the world was filled with possibilities. I was a couple of years older than my fellow freshmen at the University, but among those headed for business degrees, my age seemed to be a benefit rather than a detriment. I was more experienced. And when the draft lottery came about, I hung a sign on my door that said, “Been there, done that.”

Into the chaos of my college life stepped two of the most remarkable people I’d ever met: Simon Barnett and Brenda Lamb. They swept me into a social life like I’d never had before. If there was a party happening on campus, we were there. We went to ballgames, lectures, concerts, and plays. If there weren’t three tickets, either we didn’t go, or Simon pulled strings and found three. It was all new and different to me, and I don’t know how I got included. If anything, I was an accounting geek, Simon was an entrepreneur, and Brenda knew more than anyone about how to have a good time.

Among us, though, we were going to change the world. We were going to do great things so that Viet Nam couldn’t happen again. We were going to find cures for cancer and end world hunger. We were going to do such great things.

I didn’t drink and wouldn’t touch drugs because of what I’d seen among my friends in Viet Nam. Brenda and Simon thought that was funny, but loved having me along as their chauffeur. And whenever there was a dispute, we always yielded to what “Simon Says.” With Simon so much the dominant personality among the three of us, maybe it wasn’t surprising that Brenda and I connected in a different way. Despite the fact that I’d been in the service and was older than the other two, Brenda became my first lover. There was nothing that I wouldn’t do for her, and very little that I didn’t.

We were married a month out of college.

All three of us remained close. Simon was my best man. Our plan was that Brenda and I would work in the corporate world while Simon found the deal that would put us in business together. Brenda and I both got good jobs. I was recruited and started working for Anderson Elliott Consulting right out of college. Brenda got a great job with a local bank, but two years later, when Simon had acquired his first business, she went to work for him. We had our timetable down. I would join the new business the next year and it would be a three-way partnership. No one questioned that Simon would have the controlling share.

It was Simon who found the house. It was a big old house in Madison Park overlooking Lake Washington. I couldn’t imagine how we’d pay for it, but Simon, as usual, had a plan. He would finance the house and we would pay the mortgage to him. And since he intended to live there with us, he would pay us rent. Brenda and I would have our dream home while we were young enough to enjoy it. Simon figured a way to manage the cash flow so we’d all benefit. He couldn’t wait until we had kids so he could be an “uncle.” The deal was closed.

We moved into the house and began furnishing it. We each had private spaces and we had public ones. My special space was where I had a reclining chair, a stereo, and a picture on the wall. I’d sit there in the evening while the TV was on in the next room and listen to Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, or Credence Clearwater Revival while I vacationed in that seascape picture.

About three months after we moved in, I got sick at the office and came home at noon, intent on going straight to bed.

The bed was occupied by Simon and Brenda. Apparently we weren’t being fast enough about having kids for Simon.

Damn.

The confrontation was remarkably brief.

I threw up on them.

They were both all over me, getting things cleaned up, getting me to bed, tending my fever. I was so sick that for a while I thought I had hallucinated the whole affair. But I knew that wasn’t true. On the morning I woke up and could stand up, I packed up.

As it turned out, I didn’t have all that much to pack. My clothes, my car, my chair, and the one painting that I owned.

I signed a quit-claim deed on the property and filed for divorce. There was no contest and no partnership. I kept working at Anderson Elliott. Simon and Brenda got married. I got an invitation to the wedding, but declined to attend.

Now that I saw the size of the fortune we liquidated, I wondered selfishly whether I’d made the right decision. But looking at the way things turned out, I wouldn’t trade my feeble life for either of theirs.