Chapter 101: Keeping Up

Wednesday, March 21, 1984

We headed straight to Fidelity’s office after school. Ms. Kendall turned out to be thirty-something (at a guess) and friendly. She was much friendlier when she determined that we really did have money to invest. Jasmine handled our end of things very well. I don’t think we’d have needed to be there, except that she probably needed to build just a trifle more confidence.

By the end of the meeting, MNM was invested (at around $10,000) in a growth fund and three shares of Berkshire Hathaway — or, rather, we would be tomorrow (assuming any shares of Berkshire were available, but a small number moved on an average day, so some probably would).

We promised Ms. Kendall more business, and I was sure we’d keep that promise. Our investments would, by and large, only go up from here.

For dinner, we hit an Antones location not too far from Fidelity’s office. We hadn’t been to Antones in quite a long time, and their sandwiches were still as good as ever.

After dinner, we headed to Jasmine’s, where we all wound up talking for a couple of hours with Camille and Francis about the house and our plans, both for college and for the summer. Because of that, we passed on dessert, figuring we’d get another chance soon enough.

One of the plans we talked about was something we should have done before. Now that MNM was a real business, with shares in another business, a house on its books, and a relationship with a property management company, we needed a phone number.

Without knowing the details of all of that, but just knowing that we wanted to have a corporate identity, Camille and Francis agreed to host the number, which would simply go to an answering machine. In turn, MNM would pay for it, and we’d rotate checking the messages. Camille would call Southwestern Bell tomorrow and order the line.

We were home and in bed by ten. Even in a light school week, sleep helps!

Thursday, March 22, 1984

We all pitched in to give the group going to Northbrook’s Last Chance as much coaching and practice as we could. There’s certainly such a thing as being over-prepared, but this was a few people’s last chance to join us at State. Not many, but a few. We did what we could.

No one mentioned it, but I think most of the seniors felt that, while this might be some people’s last tournament of the year, their own last tournament forever was just one or two or possibly three away.

Darren Schwartz was the only senior whose chance at an extra tournament rested on Northbrook. I hoped he’d qualify, but then I hoped that for everyone, and not everyone could.

Friday, March 23, 1984

Meg and Steffie took off at the usual time to take the last chance group to Northbrook. We all wished them well. Hopefully, we’d have some good news on Monday!

After school, we headed to the mall to do a bit of shopping. That turned mostly into window shopping, but we all wound up buying a few things (music for me, music and one or two pieces of clothing for the girls).

We headed to the pizza place and met Candice and Sherry. After some hugs, we ordered and got settled. The girls put their heads together and voted to see ‘Splash’, which I agreed with.

The movie was as good as I remembered; the conversation was better. They’d expanded their plan a bit, after Sherry had (partly) rethought UH (based on some nudging from Angie). Candice was going to apply to A&M and UT, with UH as a fallback, and Sherry was going to look at transferring after her freshman year. That might not work because of scholarships, but it might be fine. Room and board was the big cost in 1984 (tuition and fees were quite low for in-state students), and with Candice having room and board, Sherry might be able to piggyback on it somewhat.

They were noncommittal on whether they’d want to move into our house, and I couldn’t blame them. We had no idea what the logistics of the basement were going to be, and everything else was shared living. Despite the years, despite our very settled relationships, and despite our close friendship, it wasn’t entirely clear if Candice wanted to live in the same house as me. I could hardly blame them if Candice wanted her own place with Sherry, no matter whether it was about me or not (and I might never know if I was the issue, or if it was just them wanting to have their own space).

It was one of the few little indicators that, as ‘fine’ as Candice seemed to be, she might perhaps not be ‘fine’ in the way that she appeared to be. That totally sucked, but we knew how low she’d been and why. By all reasonable standards, she’d recovered. If sharing a house with a guy (and specifically the one guy her age that she really trusted and might consider doing something with) was a bridge too far, that was sad, but understandable.

Saturday, March 24, 1984

We had our overdue get-together with Jane at two. This time, Mom was back to driving. I guess they figured they would have enough date nights coming up soon to not make it worthwhile to have one today.

Angie went first. When she came out, we touched hands as we passed, and then I headed back into Jane’s office. As always, we hugged once we were in private.

“How’ve you been?” she said.

“Really good,” I said.

“I would think so, what with the house and the investment and everything else,” she said, smiling.

We sat in our usual spaces, Jane with her usual notepad (on which she seldom wrote anything).

I nodded. “Getting the Dell investment done is huge for me. Even if it completely tanks, I’ve done everything I can do. It’s out of my hands now. I can’t fix it, and I can’t screw it up. If Michael does what he did in my first world, or Angie’s, we’re on the path to being quite well off. If he doesn’t, we’re out quite a lot, but we can move on.”

She nodded, then said, “I wasn’t going to say it before, but I think that’s healthy. Not the investment, but the attitude.”

“We’ve been working on it consciously. I still expect things to follow my first life’s path, for the most part. So does Angie. Jas and Paige aren’t tied to that, and that’s by design. All of us should be thinking ‘This is an educated guess,’ not ‘This is a sure thing.’ We are going to fail here and there. Dell is a high payoff, not a huge investment. We just bought a house for twice what we’re putting into Dell. Screw that up and we lose bigger.”

She nodded again. “Getting away from finance?”

“Sam Myers is taking me to the Sadie Hawkins dance.”

“Interesting. You two have kept your distance for quite a while.”

“She’s been dating, and has also been really focused on school. She’s between boyfriends, her grades are fine, cheer is taking up less of her time — of course — and we are friends. It makes sense.”

“Plus she gets to go out with the outgoing Big Man on Campus.”

I chuckled. “I think that’s Graham, or maybe Cal or Andy. Or Calvin.”

“Nah,” she said. “Or, at least, my perception — and Angie agrees — is that you’re basically at their level. Multiple Student Council successes, Homecoming King, dating the head cheerleader off and on, and so forth. For Sam, that’s a signature date within sophomore social circles.”

“Put that way, it makes sense,” I said, nodding. “Jess and I talked about it a little. She approves — I was pretty certain she would — both of the date and of Sam. She expects Sam to have her job in a year, and is almost certainly right.”

“And, if Sam wants more than a date?”

I chuckled. “We’ll see when we get there.”

“Which is likely the best answer of all. Next question: How are things going with Jess? Meaning, how are things going with her knowing? Or, at least mostly that.”

“Really well, I think. We’re very close friends, and likely to be dating again, by which I mean socially, not romantically, of course.”

“Oh?” Jane said, raising an eyebrow.

“She’s not planning on dating anyone else before graduation, but likes dating, so...”

“And, if you were nearly any other people, I would assume she was planning on trying to steal you away from Jasmine under the cover of dating socially. But,” she said, grinning a bit, “you’re not any other people.”

“She flat-out said that, if Jas and I screw it up, she’ll come after us.”

Jane chuckled. “Which might be a clever move from someone trying to steal you away. Still ... I can’t see it happening. She has her dream, and you have yours, and they don’t align.”

“Not to mention that I have at least four other women who would come after me if I screwed things up with Jasmine.”

“Counting me?” Jane said.

“Five, then,” I said, making her laugh. “Angie, Paige, Camille, and Mom. Plus you.”

“All true. None of them would put up with that.”

“I should have made it five, which would be six counting you. If I wanted to put a monkey wrench into my relationship with Laura, dumping Jas for Jess would do that, too.”

She nodded. “I’d like to meet her. Hopefully I’ll get to, one day.”

“I’m sure she’d like that. I talked to her a bit recently. She’s doing better, I think. College is settled — she’s going to Illinois, Urbana-Champaign — and she’s got a boyfriend, though I think it’s more ‘friend’ than ‘boyfriend,’ at least from what she’s saying.”

“Good. I completely understand her reasons for going slowly, but she needs to fully engage with the world.”

“Yeah,” I said. “In retrospect, as much as I really wanted to get out there and date and all of that from day one, I think it would have been a much slower path if not for Angie. Even before we knew, we were pushing each other along towards doing more, faster, and better.”

“That’s the same impression I have from her. She thinks she’d have dated the wrong boys, left to herself. Not that her first boyfriend was ‘right,’ so much as he was the right kind of boy — and that was mostly because she needed to fit in with a group you also fit in with. If she’d dated some rich, arrogant type — which was her self-stated preference — then jumping to Max would’ve looked like a pattern, not an exception.”

“I see that,” I said, nodding. “We lucked out that way. Laura didn’t. The universe tried to put us together, but didn’t give us enough time at Hockaday or Michigan. Except, maybe it gave us exactly the right amount. Too much, too soon, and it might’ve just been worse.”

She nodded. “You wouldn’t have had any track record for her to compare to and realize she was wrong.”

“Fortunately, the timing worked out for everyone. Which brings us back around to the ‘Best of All Possible Universes’ theory, but I continue to do my best to discount that as solipsist, implausible, and ultimately self-defeating.”