Chapter 9

We stayed by the water for a few more minutes, holding onto each other tightly, feeling the warmth that comes from more than just body heat radiating back and forth. We kissed a few more times, cautious, soft kisses. Nina was inexperienced at this sort of thing and I did not want to push her too fast and cheapen the magic of the night. Mostly we just held each other, her resting her head on my shoulder, me smelling the faint scent of her shampoo. I felt I could have done that forever.

Though love was in the air that night, so was a nearly zero degree wind-chill factor. Despite the down jackets and the embrace we shared, we finally began to shiver uncontrollably and our lips became so numb we could no longer feel our kisses. Reluctantly we let each other go and walked hand in hand back to my car.

We drove in silence for a bit, letting the car's heater tackle the task of warming up the interior. I glanced at her several times. She was looking out the window at the passing scenery but not seeing anything. Her eyes were shining and glazed, her expression contented.

When I got to the freeway and no longer needed to shift gears, I took her hand in mine once again, doing it carefully since that was my sore hand. She gazed at me lovingly.

"No matter what happens, Bill," she told me, "I'm always going to remember this night. My first date, my first kiss. Thank you for taking me."

"I'll always remember this night too," I said.

A few more minutes passed, bringing my house and an end to this night ever closer. Finally I asked, "When can we see each other again, Nina?"

"I'm not doing anything tomorrow," she told me quickly.

Sadly I shook my head. "Tracy's flying in tomorrow and I promised Mom I'd pick her up at the airport. We'll be doing all the family crap. But Sunday's free and I have lots of Christmas shopping to do."

"So do I," she said. "How about Sunday morning around nine?"

"It's a date."

"I'll come over to your house again," she said. "Remember, no phone calls just yet."

"Okay," I said doubtfully. "I take it your parents would not be too thrilled to find out you're dating me?"

"I'm sorry, Bill," she said quietly. "I would just assume we keep this a little secret from them for the time being."

"They liked me before," I offered hopefully.

"That was before," she said. "Things are different now. Very different."

"What do you mean?"

There was a long pause, as if she was trying to gather her thoughts. "Bill, my parents are kind of old you know."

I nodded. "Yeah."

"My mom was 38 when she had me, my dad was 40. They'd been told that they couldn't have children and they'd lived with that for years. They'd accepted it. And then, after all that time, my mom managed to get pregnant anyway."

I nodded, not sure what to say, not sure where this was leading.

"You see," she continued, "I'm their only child and they're kind of overprotective at times. They're also from a different generation than your parents. They're as old as your grandparents are. I've always been very close to them, probably closer than a lot of kids are because of how they've always treated me. I've always been like, well a gift from God to them. Anyway, the day that you and I had our... our fight, I went home crying. I couldn't stop crying in fact."

"Uh huh," I said, feeling more than a tinge of guilt at this admission.

"Well, my mom was home. She found me crying and she asked me what was wrong. You have to understand that was a strange way for me to act. I learned way back in grade school when I was ugly, lisping Nina not to cry. So obviously, Mom knew something was very wrong with me. I cried and cried that day while she held me and finally I told her what was wrong. I told her everything."

"You mean..." I couldn't finish, so stunned was I. She had told her everything?

"Everything," Nina said. "About how I loved you. That she already knew. But then I told her about how I'd found out that you were sleeping with every girl you could get your hands on. How you had a reputation around the school for that sort of thing. About how the girls would come up to me and ask, well, you know." She smiled crookedly. "Mom was kind of upset about that. In fact, she used a few words about you that I'd never heard her use before."

"Jesus, Nina," I said quietly. She had told her everything!

"She was more upset than I ever would have imagined. I figured she would comfort me and tell me things like 'you'll be okay without him' and 'he's not worthy of you', and stuff like that, you know?"

"Mother things," I offered.

"Right," she said, cracking a slight smile. "But that wasn't what happened at all. She was outraged, angry. I don't believe I've ever seen my mom that angry before. Not even when I was playing in her car in the driveway when I was a kid and accidentally let off the emergency brake and crashed it into the neighbor's car across the street. She was almost insane with anger, Bill."

"Wow," I said, thinking it was no wonder that I'd gotten a cold reception on the few times I'd called after our break-up. "And your dad?"

"Mom told him that night," Nina said. "I heard them talking softly to each other when they went to bed. The next morning he told me that I was to 'never see that bastard again'. That's an exact quote, mind you. It was pretty plain that Dad was even angrier than Mom. Later that day Dad took me aside and had a talk with me."

"A talk?" I asked, trying to picture jovial, terminally happy Mr. Blackmore having a serious talk about anything.

She nodded. "He told me about, well, boys like you. Boys who were only after one thing. He used a lot of profanity as he talked about it and he lost his temper a few times even though he was the only one talking. He told me how they could 'fuck up my whole life' and 'destroy everything I've worked for', how they were good for nothing but destroying other people's relationships."

"It seems your parents have some rather strong feelings about this," I said, giving the understatement of the year. What she was telling me was very unsettling. Though I would have expected some depth of anger from her parents at what she had told them, this seemed a little excessive, even for older generation people who were raised in the pre-World War II era.

"Yes," she answered, "strong feelings would be a good way to put it. Thank God it was me who answered the phone today. I don't know what would have happened if Dad would have been the one."

"Are we going to keep seeing each other, Nina?" I asked her.

She looked sharply at me. "Yes," she answered. "I want to see you as much as possible. I'm already pouting to myself because I can't see you tomorrow."

"Don't you think that your parents will find out about us pretty soon?"

She shook her head. "I don't even want to think about that," she told me. "If I keep coming over to your house and you don't call me at mine, there's no reason why they need to know anything."

I opened my mouth to protest this statement. I wanted to tell her that her reasoning was flawed, that if I'd learned one thing in the past few months it was that you could not hide your activities from the people you lived with for any length of time. But before the first word could clear my lips I slammed them shut. What purpose could such a discussion serve right now? What purpose except to spoil what had been a perfect, glorious night?

"Okay, Nina," I said, giving her a smile and giving her hand another squeeze. "We'll play it your way."

We arrived back at my house a few minutes later. I walked her to her mother's car where we exchanged one more kiss, one more hug, before she climbed inside. She started up the car and drove away. I watched her until she was out of sight.

"This is my reception?" Tracy asked with mock indignation when we finally found each other in the crowded airport. "I faithfully call and write all the time and all they can send is you to come pick me up?"

"You're lucky you even got me," I told her. "They were gonna have you take the bus home."

She laughed and we embraced each other warmly.

"It's good to see you, Bill," she said. "And it's good to see snow on the ground. I'm so sick of rain all the goddamn time."

I stepped back from her and took in her attire. She was wearing tight jeans and a sweater covered by a light windbreaker. "I don't think you're gonna be too happy about it when you step outside. It's about twenty degrees out there. Where the hell is your heavy jacket?"

"It's in my suitcase, mother," she told me, "which is probably in the baggage carousel if it isn't on its way to Beirut or something. It never gets cold enough in the Bay Area to wear the damn thing. Every time I put it on I break out in a sweat."

"Well, you'll get some use out of it this week," I replied. "C'mon, lets go get your bag."

"You seem to be in a good mood," Tracy commented as we fought our way through the terminal full of holiday travelers.

"Really?" I asked. "Does it show?"

"You're walking around looking like someone who's in the process of getting a blowjob."

I chuckled. "Well put. Actually I am in a very good mood."

"Really? And why is that? Have there been some developments since the last time I talked to you?"

"Many," I said. "It all started with this." I held up my hand for her inspection.

"Stitches," she said after giving them a quick glance. "Mom told me the other night that you'd cut your stupid self at work. You'd think that after living in two lives you'd have learned to keep your hand away from surgical instruments. Why should that put you in a good mood?"

I told her about my make-up with Nina and about our date.

"Bill, that's absolutely radical," she squealed, giving me another hug. "Congratulations."

"Thanks, Tracy." I smiled. I knew she was more than simply happy for me, but for herself as well. My improving relationship with Nina went a long way towards confirming the theory we'd discussed at Thanksgiving. I knew my next piece of news would make her even happier in that regard.

"And there's more," I told her.

"More?"

I told her what I had done for Anita. She listened with growing respect.

"Wow," she finally said. "You really are a conniving son of a bitch, little brother."

"Thank you."

"Do you think it worked?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Time will tell. I'll keep an eye out for his car suddenly parked in front of her house. If I see that, I'll know it worked. If I don't, then maybe I'll have to come up with something else."

She giggled. "My brother," she said, "the freaking hand of fate."

As we drove towards home Tracy seemed a little fidgety, as if there was something she wanted to say but that she didn't know how to begin. Finally I told her to spill it.

"Well," she started, "I know you've been putting money into the stock market and all."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"But I was wondering if you'd really thought about, you know, taking advantage of the knowledge you have."

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

"You could do so much more than just put a few bucks into the stock market," she said. "You could actually 'invent' things that are going to be popular in a few years. You could patent them before the inventor does and then take the money from that and put it into your stocks. You could make billions if you play your cards right Bill. Billions! And I could help you. I'm going to be a corporate lawyer that specializes in..."

"Hold on a second, Tracy," I interrupted, not liking the way she was talking a bit.

"What?"

"You're suggesting that I steal people's inventions and take the credit for them?"

"It's not really stealing," she protested. "You're just thinking of it first. And I'm not talking about the telephone patent or anything. I'm talking about shit like that." She pointed at the car in front of us. In its rear window was a small plastic sign shaped like a highway caution sign and colored yellow. It was stuck to the rear window with suction cups. BABY ON BOARD read the motto in black letters. "The fuckin' baby on board signs. Whoever invented that stupid thing must be raking it in. Something like that comes along every couple of years. There must be other stuff like that in the future, stuff you already know about. Why can't you just make the first move?"

"Tracy..." I started.

"Or what about books and music lyrics?" she went on. "You know what books are going to be best sellers! You know what songs are going to be number one hits! What if you wrote them first? What if you copyrighted the..."

"Tracy!" I barked, finally getting her attention.

"What?"

"I couldn't do that," I told her.

"Why not?" she asked. "Think about how much money you could make!"

"I'll make enough money from my stocks, Tracy. I was a paramedic who was used to living on less than forty thousand dollars a year. My investments will be enough to keep me comfortable for the rest of my life."

"Fuck comfort!" she yelled. "Bill, you have the potential to become the richest man ever if you play your cards right."

"And what would that accomplish?" I asked her, surprised and slightly disgusted by this greedy side of my sister. "First of all my conscience will not allow me to do something like that. Despite what you say, what you are suggesting is stealing. Maybe the worst form of stealing a person could do."

"It's not..."

"It is!" I yelled. "But let's put that aside for a moment. Suppose I do as you ask and steal other people's thoughts in order to capitalize upon them. We've already discovered that fucking around with fate can have disastrous consequences. You're asking me to potentially increase those consequences tenfold. How many lives could I screw up by doing that? How many people throughout history could I potentially fuck over?"

"Bill," she said carefully, "you would be helping yourself and your family by doing it. You wouldn't be hurting anybody you knew."

"Anybody I knew," I repeated softly.

"Right," she agreed.

Fighting to keep my eyes on the road to avoid glaring at my sister and to keep my voice level to keep from scaring her too badly, I said, "Tracy, when I was a paramedic I worked for a corporation. A large, faceless corporation based on the East Coast. They owned ambulance companies all over the United States, in damn near every state. And do you know what their prime motivation was? Do you know what was behind every decision they made?"

"Money obviously," she said, not getting me.

"Right," I said. "Money. Legal tender. The almighty dollar. That was what they were all about, that was their focus. Capitalism at it's finest, right?"

She shrugged. "That's what everything is all about."

I nodded. "Uh huh. It is. But you see, I was the poor slob on the bottom end of the pile, the poor slob who was just trying to scratch out a living in this huge corporation. A worker bee. And like a worker bee I was expendable. I watched what happens when some group of people or some individual is only looking out for itself. I watched what happens when someone said to themselves, 'nobody I know is getting hurt' and then signed a piece of paperwork that laid off thousands of people he would never have to look at. I saw many of my friends lose their jobs and have their lives destroyed, saw them have to go on welfare and unemployment, saw them lose their houses, their spouses even, because some fucking bean counter in corporate headquarters decided that the company wasn't making enough profit in the Pacific Northwest division. They would have to have a 'reduction in force', or they would say that 'positions needed to be eliminated'. They were rich fucks up in some office building in New York throwing around euphemisms about firing people so they could show a few extra bucks on the stockholder report."

"Bill... I..."

"I've been on the wrong end of what you're saying, Tracy," I told her. "I used to think about people that sat in office buildings, making decisions based on money that would ultimately destroy people's lives. You know what I used to think about them?"

"What?" she asked quietly.

"I used to tell myself that they'd sold their souls. That they'd given up morality completely in order to be able to do what they do and sleep at night. I used to swear that there was no way I could ever do such a thing." I looked over at her. "What you are asking me to do amounts to selling my soul, Tracy. I would be taking something from someone else in order to further my own cause. I will not do that. I'll invest in stocks that I know are going to go up and I'll make money off of that. Sure, those companies are doing all of the things that I've just described to their employees. But I won't be involved in that. I will never have to knowingly destroy other people in order to get ahead. Maybe that doesn't qualify me as a saint, but at least I won't be selling my soul, do you understand?"

She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes soft and maybe showing a touch of shame. Finally she nodded. "I understand, Bill. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought that up."

But I wondered if she really understood. Somehow I didn't think she did.

Argument with Tracy aside, the Christmas break of 1983 ranks up there as one of the most enjoyable two weeks of either of my lives. I was in love and my love was being returned. It was the initial, realization stage of love, the time of discovery, a time that comes very rarely in a person's lifetime, never for some. It was a time that had never occurred in my previous life.

Nina and I saw each other whenever we could, doing whatever struck our fancy. We went Christmas shopping together, holding hands as we walked through the crowded mall. We went to movies together, cuddling against each other and occasionally sharing a kiss. We sat for hours sometimes just talking, reveling in the friendship that we shared and almost lost, just enjoying being together.

More than ever I looked forward to seeing her. More than ever I felt the pang of withdrawal when she could not make it over during the day or if she could not arrange to talk to me on the phone. These feelings were almost foreign to me, surprising in their power and depth. Nina made me realize how foolish I'd been in my previous life to ever think that I'd really been in love.

Even the feelings I once had for Lisa, my ex-wife, paled in comparison. Nina made me realize what a farce our relationship had been, how it had been a drastic mistake from the very beginning. Had I really ever thought I'd loved her?

Lisa and I had met when I'd responded to a call for a fall in a grocery store in South Spokane. Paramedics are automatically cynical of fall calls in grocery stores or other places of business. Usually what you find when you get there is someone who has accidentally or even deliberately come crashing to the ground and is seeing dollar signs in their eyes from a future law suit against the business. Such was my attitude upon entering that store that afternoon. What I'd found however was not a fat welfare recipient with visions of a six figure settlement, but an attractive stocker who had gotten her ankle caught in a ladder while putting fresh merchandise on the shelf. She had fallen, twisting the ankle into an unnatural position. She was dark haired, dark eyed, and beautiful. Being the visually stimulated person I was back then, I was immediately intrigued by her, imagining what that body looked like under her uniform. I began my exam of her, coming to a medical conclusion in less than a second. Her ankle was swollen and angulated to the left. She was obviously in pain. Her face was scrunched up and beads of sweat were standing out on her forehead. Broken tibia and fibula. Nasty and painful but not lethal or crippling.

Paramedics often measure a person's personality traits by their pain tolerance. When a person whines and moans about a simple little cut on the finger, behaving as if someone had rammed a hot poker up his or her ass, that person is judged to be of poor character. But when a person has an obviously fractured bone and declines an offer of morphine to help ease it and even offers to drive themselves to the hospital as Lisa did that day, that person is judged to be someone to reckon with. I sat in the back of the ambulance with her that day admiring her character, and her looks. This was my first mistake, rating my future wife by the black and white standards of my cynical profession.

There are of course ethical rules against asking patients out on dates. That extends to taking phone numbers, names, or any other personal information from the paperwork for later use. However if a paramedic on lunch break should happen to choose a certain grocery store to buy his deli sandwiches, a certain grocery store where a certain stocker was now working as a checker in order to keep off her broken ankle, there are no ethical concerns in that situation. Over the next month I bought deli sandwiches for lunch every day. I bought them until I was so sick of them that I would drop them in the garbage can on the way out of the store and then head for Taco Bell or McDonalds. I always chose the line that Lisa was checking, no matter how many people were in it, no matter how empty the other lines were.

I don't want to sound like I was a stalker or anything. If Lisa had given me some indication that she didn't like my flirtations I would have ceased immediately. But she didn't. She obviously enjoyed the attention she was getting from me and she shamelessly flirted back. Finally I asked her out and she accepted.

We began dating regularly, crossing over the line into the land of boyfriend and girlfriend. I took her home to meet my parents and she took me home to meet hers. Both of us at the time were living with roommates in small apartments and both of us were sick of it. It wasn't long before we decided to move in together.

It was about then that we began telling each other that we loved one another. Was it true? I thought it was then. I really did. After all, you didn't move into an apartment with a girl, you didn't share a bed with her if you didn't love her, did you? It seemed to make perfect sense. We were in love. After all, she could take broken ankle pain. What was not to love about her?

Only after spending that first night with Nina, only after I felt what true love was really like, did I realize how idiotic this supposition really was. Lisa and I didn't love each other, we were roommates. We'd enjoyed each other's bodies a few times on a purely physical level and then, to get away from unpleasant living arrangements, we moved in together and called it love. We called it love so often that we started to believe that it was love.

Before long we decided to get married. I didn't fall down on my knee and propose to her. I didn't hire a pilot to write 'marry me, Lisa' in the sky. Our decision to marry came about after a long discussion on how much we would save on taxes and car insurance and about how her parents would stop making snide remarks about us living in sin. We didn't even call it marriage when we discussed it. We talked of 'legitimizing our relationship'.

Even then there were strong indicators that it wouldn't work. We had different views on many things; different views which often led to arguments. We had trouble talking together at times. She had no understanding for the bizarre hours I had to work and for the frequent late calls that brought me home as much as two hours late at times. When I tried to explain some of the frustrations of my job to her she would only look at me with a blank expression and then ask what was on TV. When she tried to talk to me about her job frustrations I would do the same. We were not really living on the same planet with each other, but we were in love, weren't we? That was all that mattered, wasn't it? If I thought about these problems at all during this time it was only to tell myself that marriage would change all that. When you got married you really loved each other. That was the rules, wasn't it?

So we did it. We sent out invitations and had a large wedding at a local park in the springtime. Lisa looked ravishing in her wedding dress. I looked handsome in my tux. Some great pictures and some great video were produced from the affair. We flew off to Hawaii for our honeymoon and had some great sex. We lounged on the beach and I felt pride at the throngs of males that were admiring the view of my new wife in her bikini. I'd surely bagged a hot one, hadn't I? And we loved each other deeply of course. We said it every day.

We settled into an unpleasant routine much faster than we should have. Before three months went by I was calling her 'the old lady' to my friends and grumbling about balls and chains. Our arguments grew more frequent and more intense. We realized we could not stand even being around each other except when we were having sex, the only aspect of our relationship where no problems existed. I was eventually forced to admit to myself that I was not happy, that I was no longer 'in love' with my wife. I began to toss around the idea of divorce in my head.

Before that idea could get a firm hold Lisa began throwing up in the morning and complaining that her boobs hurt. Her period, usually as regular as the tide, did not come when it was supposed to. A simple test available at any drug store confirmed what we suspected. Lisa, despite her diaphragm, was pregnant.

Strangely enough this was the happiest time of our marriage. Lisa positively glowed at the prospect of producing a baby. Our arguments decreased to the point that I really thought that things were going to be okay between us. There was never any question about abortion, although both of us were firm believers in a woman's right to have one. During her second trimester hormones took over her body and an era of sexual delight emerged. We would do it any time, anywhere, in any position. We would sometimes drop down on the carpet and do it with our clothes on. That had to mean I was still in love, right? I shelved any thoughts of divorce I'd been having.

During her third trimester we dug ourselves in even deeper. Using money from both her parents and mine, we put down a down payment on a three-bedroom house near downtown. The papers were signed a week before she delivered and when Becky came home from the hospital it was to a piece of real estate we actually owned.

It wasn't long before the problems began again. Lisa went through a vicious period of post-partum depression that she never really recovered from. By the time Becky was six months old I realized two things. One, I did not want to live with my wife anymore because I did not love her. Two, I was hopelessly in love with the small life we'd created and I couldn't bear the thought of being without her.

I hung in there as long as I could, as did Lisa who must have realized the same things. Our arguments grew more intense once again and more frequent. I thought about divorce often but could never bring myself to do it because I knew that would mean that Becky would be taken away. Finally the breaking strain happened. During an argument over why I was spending twenty dollars a week for lunch at work, I'd let the dreaded word slip from my mouth. I'll advise any married men out there that it is not a good idea to call your spouse a 'cunt' in any circumstance. Lisa, enraged at this word, lost her temper and slapped me across the face.

I stood staring at her, my face stinging with the blow, my hands itching to return it. Sickened that we'd turned to insulting profanity and physical violence as a solution to our problems I picked up my car keys and walked out the door. The next day I filed the papers. Six months later we were officially divorced.

Thinking back upon all of that it seemed the entire thing was a bad joke. Comparing the love I felt for Nina to what I'd felt during the happiest portion of my relationship with Lisa was like comparing an orgasm to a urinary tract infection. There was no question that Nina was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Though I had no idea how she would react to having a broken ankle I knew that Nina would never strike me in anger over an argument about twenty dollars for lunch. I knew that I would never have to reassure myself that I was really in love with her. Love was a physical thing, a sensation that could not be mistaken for anything else. Once you feel its pull upon you, you are forced to laugh at all of those, including your former self, who have asked themselves, 'am I really in love'. As I found out, when you are really in love, you know it.

The physical aspects of the relationship between Nina and I did not progress much. We kept our affections mostly confined to brief kisses and frequent hugs at first. We stayed with the holding of hands in the car while driving or while walking together. I would be dishonest to say that I did not wish to further this-remember I had an adolescent's hormones-but I knew it was very important to let Nina set the pace of this progression. This was Nina's first trip into this land and I did not want her to feel rushed.