Chapter 34: A Change of Venue

Saturday, September 3, 1983

Most of the Debate team (even the Extemp specialists, and including the Drama crossovers) decided to spend our holiday weekend where you might expect us to: at the library. I truly didn’t think we needed the research, but we did need the team-building.

It was eye-opening for the new kids — most of whom attended — to see what we did and how we did it. Especially for the freshmen, it was quite the crash course in college libraries and research techniques. They took to it surprisingly well, which made me happy.

The only kids that missed the outing were Kenny Lanier (whose parents had taken the family to Galveston), the Bells (who were at a friend’s ranch), and Linda (who had some sort of cheerleading thing). I was optimistic that we might go two years in a row without any dilettantes. That would be quite a feat!

I spent a bit of time doing some research that had nothing whatsoever to do with our topic. I probably should have done it before, but I hadn’t been in the mood at all.

It turned out to be a waste of time, if an interesting waste of time. Nathan McBride was an enigma by 1983 library research standards. Admittedly, I wasn’t great at using the resources. Looking up an ordinary person was seldom part of our agenda.

Nevertheless, his phone number and address were unlisted, even in cross directories. He wasn’t in any of the professions whose professional directories I searched (lawyers, doctors, accountants, and so forth). As far as I could tell, he’d never been mentioned in the Houston Business Journal, or the newspapers, or any other local periodicals for which I had an index. There were other sources (deeds, for instance, were open records) but they would involve me driving from office to office, potentially fruitlessly.

I could ask Mr. Lancaster (and I might) but I’d wanted to try on my own. I didn’t feel too bad about spending the time, but it was a reminder of how very limited the options of the day were, compared to what I was still somewhat used to from 2020.

We had dinner as a team, then pondered what to do. Jas and I had discussed going back to her place, but we were spending the night tomorrow, so waiting seemed like the wiser course.

In the end, we headed to the mini-golf place. I don’t think they were ready for twenty-five loud, competitive teenagers taking over, but then teenagers were their best customers. I was just sorry for some of the grownups who were also trying to enjoy mini-golf.

Once we finished up, everyone went their separate ways. We dropped Paige and Jas off with plans to pick them up tomorrow around one and head to the show.

Sunday, September 4, 1983

We went to church as usual, then had lunch as a family. After lunch, Angie and I headed out (in separate cars) to pick up Paige and Jasmine.

They’d decided to stay at the Warwick. I was a bit jealous since the Warwick would be doing their usual brunch on Monday. Jas and I were considering surprising them by showing up for it.

The show was at Jones Hall, the home of the Houston Symphony and Houston Grand Opera. I hadn’t been in the place in a very long time, not since Mom and Dad took me to the symphony. That would be either four, or forty-something, years ago.

For all that, I still remembered it well, including the staircases that always gave me a mild sense of vertigo. It’s not that I’m scared of heights, but I’m almost scared of heights. Jones Hall has long sweeping staircases with open space between each step, and it’s a long way down. They’re not any more dangerous than any other staircase, and I doubt anyone has ever fallen from them, but they’ve always given me just the slightest sense of potential disaster.

That feeling may have been foreshadowing. ‘Zorba’ turned out to be ... well, perhaps not our least favorite musical, but all four of us thought it belonged on the short list of candidates, anyway. Too dark, too grim, too obsessed with death, and — when it wasn’t depressing — too full of fortune-cookie ‘wisdom’ and juvenile humor. Heck, we were juveniles, and we still rolled our eyes at some of what was clearly supposed to feel clever.

None of us considered the afternoon wasted. It’s good to go see things that you don’t like, so that you get a sense of what you do like, and so you know you don’t want to see them again. If Steffie were somehow to propose ‘Zorba’, I could imagine the four of us making it clear we were going for the smallest roles we could get. That, or updating it more than a bit.

Yes, it would be more than a little arrogant for a bunch of high school students to attempt to update a Broadway show. But then, we were more than a little arrogant, so ... maybe.

We split up after the show. Jas and I headed to the Hyatt, while Angie and Paige were going out for seafood, then heading to the Warwick.

Jas and I ate in the revolving restaurant — the first time we’d done that in a while — and then retired to our room. It was still early, which just meant we had more time to talk after enjoying the bed a couple of times.

Jas said, “Repeating myself ... that was not my favorite, but I’m glad you proposed it.”

“Thanks, honey.”

“I’d much rather we take chances than miss out.”

“Me, too. That goes for most everything.”

“Including business and investing?” she said.

I nodded. “And gambling.”

That got a giggle. “Well ... that’s supposed to be risky.”

“Not the way I do it. I’ve only had history slap me in the face once so far.”

“Still ... if you miss, you miss.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve told myself. I know less about business and investing, though I know a lot, but ... we’ll make mistakes, miss things, come in too late or too early, all of that. It’s fine. I don’t want to be anywhere near one hundred percent right. That would get us noticed in the wrong ways.”

“Of course. I’m ready to get involved when I turn eighteen. Maybe we can find someone we trust before then, but...”

“We will, for some things. The money we get from the auto accident, if that comes through before we’re eighteen, anyway. That I can justify investing. Dad will go for that, and support someone helping us and taking marching orders directly from us. Aside from that, we’ll mostly wait.”

“You know...” she said, shifting in a little closer, “I find it funny how quickly I’ve gone from ‘Wow, this is utterly mind-boggling and the biggest thing ever!’ to just quietly discussing things that only make sense because you and Angie are who you are.”

I nodded. “We’re made that way, I think. I certainly am. I mean ... I think about who I am and how I got here fairly often because I don’t want to forget or ignore the differences. We want to watch for changes, ripples, all of that. But it’s still ... normalized. It’s just who I am. It’d be as if I had a third arm. Sure, that’d be amazing and a big conversation piece, but I’d get used to it and just use it, and people around me would mostly get used to it, too.”

“It’d probably be really useful for sports!”

“Well, that, or it’d throw off everything and make me totally uncoordinated.”

“There is that.”

“It’s still weird, and it’s still big. But it’s also normal. It has to be. Mostly, I just need to be a teenager. A smart, mature, knowledgeable teenager, but a teenager, not two people in one body or whatever.”

She sighed, stretched, and nuzzled in against me, which got me stroking her back a bit more. “And I need to see you that way, and I do. It makes a big difference. It’d be weird to dwell on you or Angie being different. I’m just still surprised that it’s so normal to talk about things you did ... well ... forty years ago. Also, how little that helps day-to-day. That still surprises me.”

“Day-to-day life is almost completely different. I doubt more than ... oh ... ten or fifteen hours of Northwestern was significantly the same. The Cubs game, maybe. Second City. Ravinia. Even those were seriously different because of the company, but at least the events themselves were the same. Everything else we perturbed too much just being there.”

“Which seems weird, but also plausible.”

I nodded. “I may be overstating it. Some of the assemblies were likely the same. The Debate classes Cammie, Laura, and I weren’t in were likely the same. A lot of stuff around the dorm was probably similar. I’d guess that two-thirds or more of the kids there had ninety-percent-plus the same experience as they did the first time. It’s just that we didn’t. None of you were there, for one thing, and Gene was. I was a totally different person. How could my experience have been similar?”

She nodded. “But now...”

“Now, this experience is the Northwestern experience. The old one is just ... well, more than an old dream, but it’s ... faded. I can remember it, but it’s not exactly real. It’s almost, but not quite, like remembering a favorite book or movie.”

“Weird, but ... it makes sense.”

“I’m glad it does. It doesn’t always make sense to me, but ... enough of the time.”

She grinned. “And ... enough serious stuff. Are we...?”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“Good answer! I want a shower now.”

“Me, too!”

We headed to the shower, where we found out that ... well, we could still take advantage of tomorrow morning, even if we’d decided not to wait now. At least the bed wouldn’t have even more of a spot to avoid.

We climbed into bed, still naked, and turned out the lights.

“I love you,” Jas said.

“I love you, too.”

“Under a year now!”

“I can’t wait!”

She snuggled in a little tighter and we drifted off to sleep together.

Monday, September 5, 1983

We didn’t actually take advantage of the morning. We overslept, instead, and had to get going in order to make it to the Warwick without missing Angie and Paige.

Since we were surprising them, we didn’t coordinate any of it, just headed upstairs to the brunch and got our own table. Fifteen minutes later, Angie spotted me getting some prime rib.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she said.

“We were hungry,” I said.

“Of course you were.”

“And you didn’t work up an appetite?”

“We did a lot of snacking last night,” she said, licking her lips.

“Good for the soul, but ultimately making you hungrier for actual nourishment. Or, at least, that’s my experience.”

“Mine, too. Still ... no complaints.”

“Of course not.”

We split up again, only rejoining them at the end of brunch. We timed it so that Angie could meet us at home so we could all go to Mike’s in one car. That seemed like the best plan.

Mike’s Labor Day party pretty much confirmed what we’d all been afraid of. To their credit, most of the group had shown up. Emily, Mark, and Morty were obviously still together. Mel and Andy were ‘obviously’ together, too, as were Cammie and Cal.

The other, more traditional, couples were exactly as they appeared. Angie and Paige, meanwhile, each appeared to be single.

It was the rest of the group that was ... problematic. There were almost twenty kids who I barely knew. Angie occasionally made a gagging gesture about one or another of them when no one but us could see it.

The two groups didn’t mix, and Trish didn’t make the slightest effort to talk to any of us, nor did anyone in that group. Even Mike barely bothered to acknowledge us.

That pretty much settled that. As far as Mike was concerned, Study Group was done. He hadn’t bothered to try to save it, and it was pretty clear that he wasn’t going to miss us, not while Trish was around.

I still owed it to him to talk to him, and I did, very briefly, catching him when he’d run off to the bathroom.

“Any updates?” I said.

“Look, I know you’re opposed, but Trish is cool. You can get to know her tomorrow.”

“Mike, no one’s mixing, and you know she can’t attend...”

“She’ll be there. My house, and I’m not uninviting her. It’ll be fine. We can vote quickly.”

“You know that won’t work.”

“Well, there’s really not an alternative. I’m not kicking her out.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “I guess she’ll be here.”

“Yeah.”

With that, he closed the bathroom door. I headed back, deep in thought.

The whole thing worried me, though not badly. I was fairly certain that Mike wouldn’t tell Trish our secrets, or at least not anytime soon. Perhaps, if she was dumping him, he might try bribing her with information. We’d have to have damage control in place, but then we already did.

Who exactly was going to believe that Andy and Mel weren’t a couple? They’d been together since Freshman year! So had Cammie and Cal! Heck, they’d even gotten in trouble for misbehaving at a dance, hadn’t they?

It was a worry, and it would continue to be a worry, but we’d cross those bridges when we came to them. Continuing as if nothing was wrong would just give Trish more opportunities to decide to mess with us.

What would she gain from outing Mel or Cammie, after all? Or Cal, or Andy? None of them were in her way or would ever be in her way.

I checked with the others as best as I could, as did Angie and Jas. The answer was as expected: no one liked Trish, much less trusted her, and no one wanted to keep meeting here under the circumstances.

About half an hour before we planned to leave, I headed upstairs and found Rita.

From the look on her face, I was pretty sure she knew what I was going to say.

“Mike fucked it up, didn’t he?” she said.

I nodded. “Pretty much well and truly.”

She chuckled, but it was a weak, wry sort of chuckle. “I told him it was a mistake. Teenagers! Whatcha gonna do?”

I shrugged. “He’s gotta learn his own lessons. Sometimes that’s best done the hard way.”

“It’s never best done the hard way, I think. It’s just that sometimes that’s the only way.”

“That, too.”

“I’m going to miss you, Steve,” she said. “You, and everyone in the group. I’d have you over myself, but that would just make things worse.”

“We’ll try to not be strangers. At the very least, I’ll make sure you know when we’re performing.”

“I’d really like that!”

“Is Anderson home?” I said. He hadn’t been when we’d arrived.

“He is.”

“I’m going to go say hi.”

“Thanks, Steve. That will mean a lot to him. He thinks highly of you,” she said.

“I think highly of him, too.”

We hugged, and then I headed upstairs. Anderson was sitting in his study, door open, reading some papers. I knocked at the open door.

“Ah, Steve!” he said, looking up and setting the paperwork aside, then getting up.