Chapter 49: Chasing Rabbits ... and Billionaires

Saturday, November 13, 1982

Angie and I got up around eight-thirty — sleeping in, for us — and were eating by nine. If Mom, who was hanging around the kitchen the whole time, thought anything of the sleeping arrangements, she was keeping it to herself.

The morning paper informed me that Yuri Andropov had taken over in the USSR. Got it wrong on Chernenko, but I always confused the two. Most likely things were just fine and the universe wasn’t throwing us any new curve-balls. At least, I hoped not.

Around nine-thirty I heard our phone line ring and hopped up to get it.

“Hey, Steve.”

“Hi, Jess.”

“Just a quick call. Figured you’d want to know last night ended 28-12. Not our best game ever, but solid.”

“Grah!”

She giggled. “In the third and fourth quarters, but clean-up, not playing savior.”

“Good.”

“Very good! I’m not certain that it’ll hold, but the other behavior is ... holding. Of course, he’s had limited opportunities off the leash. Like, none.”

“Works for me.”

“He knows the rules. Behave, be a gentleman, continue to be a gentleman, and good things happen. Don’t, and... other things happen. Or, don’t happen.”

“Fair enough.”

“You aren’t a privileged star quarterback. I’m sure he thinks it’s completely unfair.”

“Then he’s wrong.”

She chuckled. “Very. For now at least. I can’t fix what college will do to him, if he goes somewhere that lets players get away with anything short of murder.”

That reminded me of a story I could never tell Jessica, about the Baylor basketball team a while in the future, where murder was exactly what happened. I couldn’t remember any details, so I couldn’t take any action, even if I’d wanted to.

“Fingers crossed for the best,” I said.

“Definitely! I need to run. Homework. So much homework! I need to catch up if I’m going to go look for invisible rabbits tonight.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Don’t get distracted. Most of the squad seems to like the idea of rabbit-hunting.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“At least I know we won’t distract the lead,” she said, giggling.

“Oh, he’ll still appreciate you. Just not the same way.”

“True! Love you, friend.”

“Love you, friend.”

“Jess?” Angie asked as we headed off to HAAUG.

“Jess. We won, pretty handily. No Graham required, though he got in a bunch of time anyway.”

“He would no matter what, if we were up. Graham’s starting next year and needs the practice.”

“Yeah. Cal says next year may be as good. Most of the graduation losses will be offset with up-and-comers, like Graham.”

“I am damn sure Memorial didn’t have two big winning seasons in a row while I was in school. Some good games, but not like this.”

“Me, neither. I told you, I hung around with some of the in-crowd. They went to the games to party, not watch the game!”

“Max?”

She sighed. “He was in with the in-crowd, because, well ... drugs and connections. Took me far too damn long to realize he wasn’t a good guy. Okay, no. It took me far too damn long to realize I couldn’t make him a good guy. But, then, I was a party girl and he was great at partying.”

“Gene’s working out well.”

“I’m keeping him a while longer, yeah. How long? Not sure. When there’s a good reason for us to part, we’ll part, with no hard feelings.”

Something about that tickled a bit of my mind just a bit, but ... nope, gone. Needed more thought.

“So ... what do you think?” she asked. I guess I’d hesitated a bit, thinking.

“Huh? Oh ... about today?”

“Yeah. Are we going to find our invisible rabbit?” she said, grinning.

“He’s plenty visible.”

“Eh. It’s still good.”

“Well, if I told anyone — including him — that he was going to be a multi-billionaire, people would likely treat me about the way they treated poor Elwood. So, you have a point.”

“I’m hoping we meet up with our quarry.”

“Me, too.”

“That’ll give you ... what?”

“A year to a year and a half, if I recall correctly. I can’t very well go check out a biography of him now.”

“There are...? Duh. Of course there are biographies of him.”

“Really, more ... he wrote an autobiographical business book. It’d have all the information I need. There might be more. But ... yeah, not here.”

“So, a year to a year and a half to get an in so that you can invest a bunch of money for a little tiny stake.”

“Exactly. I think it’ll work. If it doesn’t, we don’t lose, we just miss an opportunity to win big.”

“Which I’d call a loss, but yeah, I see what you mean.”

“We’re asking for a lot. His original initial investors were family. We’re outsiders. But we’d invest a reasonable amount for a reasonable percentage.”

“Which seems completely fair.”

“And he’ll need the money. If we miss the window, though ... six months later? He’ll be rolling in cash flow and it’d take ten or twenty times as much to be an investment that would matter.”

She nodded. “So, timing is literally everything.”

“Yeah. There are some other opportunities, but this is the big one that I know of for a while. Well ... particularly because the others I just don’t have the access to, here. Being in the same high school is priceless.”

“What else? As a for-instance?”

“Microsoft, at their IPO. We’ll be twenty, so we could participate, just ... not as insiders. Apple, in the late 1990s, when they suck, because they will completely not suck in the 2000s. Berkshire Hathaway...”

“Who? What?”

I chuckled. “Financial people know them now, but not a lot of other people. A guy named Warren Buffett runs them. Basically, they invest in other businesses and make a fortune. I checked a bit ago and their stock is about six hundred a share. By the mid-2010s it’ll be two hundred thousand a share. I’d buy in now, but ... okay, fine, I’ve been lazy. Dad would likely go for it, but...”

“But?”

“Eh. If it more than doubles before I’m eighteen, I’ll buy it early, somehow. At $2,000 we’re still looking at a one hundred to one return over thirty years.”

Angie’s eyes bugged. “That’s ... we could...”

“We could easily buy thirty thousand, netting us three million by then. If Dell works, that’ll actually be chump change, but...”

“But if we can capitalize somewhere else, and it’s even ten thousand a share...”

“We buy more. Twenty to one is nothing to sneeze at.”

She hesitated. “I think we’re doing the right thing by waiting.”

“Sis?”

“We already do little things, reasonable things, to be nice. Kolaches. Donuts. Snacks. Not asking for gas money. All that. If we had a ton of money handy, the temptation...”

“Yeah. I’ve thought about it. My senior year ... heck, your senior year, probably ... one of the richer in-crowd kids at Memorial had their eighteenth birthday party in New Orleans, and took fifty of his closest friends. On two chartered jets.”

“I heard about that. I can’t remember who it was. Some guy I didn’t know. Not a sports guy, I’m pretty sure. It was crazy!”

“I don’t want to go nuts like that. I also don’t want Dad to get any idea that we have more money socked away than he does. In a way, I feel bad about that...”

“But ... yeah. Unless we explain why, what in the world would he think? And ... maybe we tell them. I really, really want to. But I think we may have to wait until we’re older, so we don’t take away their feelings of raising us. Once we hit that point where your kids are your friends, not your children, then ... then they can probably handle it.”

“It’ll help that we’re so damn close, I think. That we didn’t pull away when we had every ability to pull away.”

She nodded. “And that we clearly respect them, as well as love them.”

“My biggest reservation is ... there’s nothing in Lutheranism to allow for this. I mean, God can do anything God wants, but it’s out of the scope of the Bible. I can’t see them deciding that means Satan did it, but...”

“But ... yeah. It’d rock their faith. We... died ... I still do not like that word! ... and then came back. Not the way we’re supposed to. No God, no judgment, no ... nothing. And we weren’t either of us good, faithful saved Lutherans at that point. I was agnostic, in prison, and with a lesbian, and you were...”

“Mostly a believer in ... something ... but nominally Unitarian Universalist, with a mishmash of beliefs and some enormous differences with Lutheranism, particularly 21st century Missouri Synod Lutheranism. I’d have been at home in the ELCA, mostly, but Mom and Dad would’ve called them heretics.”

“Gotta think on that,” she said. “They mean so much, I’d want to tell them. But ... I don’t want to mess them up.”

“God, no. Anything but that.”

We got to HAAUG a bit after eleven. The speaker was a guy from one of the tech magazines talking about the soon-to-be-announced Apple Lisa. What a glorious failure that had turned out to be! Amazing technology, terrible price point, awful marketing, and way too little software. Fortunately, out of Lisa’s ashes would rise Macintosh, keeping Apple alive and putting it on a path to future glory.

The speaker wrapped up a bit after noon. Angie and I fetched my computer and discs from the car, set up, and started talking to people. The questions were always the same. Did I have this game? That application? A particular copy-protection-breaking program? Did I want them? I did? They’d drop by shortly.

Angie went off after a bit and came back with some hot dogs and Diet Cokes, which I really needed.

As I was finishing my snack, I spotted a familiar face. Not the face I was ... well, I’d hate to say stalking, but ... okay. Benignly stalking. No, this face belonged to ... um...

The name popped into my head about two seconds before Angie said, “Hey, that’s Adam Baum. What’s he doing here?”

“I kinda knew he came to these meetings.”

“Huh. Well, there’s one Memorial face.” She gave me a hug. “Restroom’s calling my name. Back in a bit.”

“Love you, sis.”

“Love you, too.”

I’d switched over to my computer, booting up a different copy-protection-defeating program, when I heard a raised voice. “Hey! Wow! I know you! What’re you doing here?”

My heart, I think, literally skipped a beat. Some stalker I was! My quarry had just tracked me down. I turned around to find Michael Dell rapidly closing the distance between us, hand extended.

I’d pondered this in my head dozens of times. What I might say. How I might introduce myself. No version of that had ever included him recognizing me and initiating the meeting.

“Oh, hi! Um ... Michael ... um...”

That got a bigger smile from him. “Michael Dell, yeah. Steve Marshall! I had no idea you were into computers! Of all the people to run into!”

“The same,” I said, shaking hands. “Cool!”

“Man! I gotta hand it to you! Not just besting James Palmer, but also slamming that jerk Randy, and dating Jessica in the bargain. I mean ... that was one hell of a show!”

I chuckled. “None of it planned, so much as ... well ... right place, right time.”

“One heck of a right place!”

“I heard something about you selling some outlandish number of newspaper subscriptions, speaking of.”

He blinked, smiling. Just smiling, fortunately. It was a slightly high-stakes gamble, but I had to get this conversation towards mutual admiration. He’d handed me the perfect segue. It’d have been foolish to not run with it.