Chapter 185: A Breakfast for Millionaires

Saturday, May 7, 2005 (Continued)

At daybreak, I felt much more relaxed and secure. Life was good, provided there were several million dollars in my LA account! I was quite eager to go to an ATM to check that. I'd had more or less enough sleep, so I went outside and offered to get the guys some coffee or whatever. They happily accepted more coffee, as their flasks were drained. I figured fresh coffee was the least I could give them for helping us survive the night. Alarm-Girl didn't need anything as she'd had plenty of chances to snack when I relieved her twice-hourly.

I made myself a small breakfast. I killed a little time starting on my schoolwork, waiting for someone to wake up. Carol and Donna were first, so I said to Carol, "Do you want to come for a drive to get some nice food from the bakery?"

Carol was eager, and Donna too.

"Sorry Donna, but I'll just take Carol this time."

"But I want to come too."

I just looked at her silently, until she got the message that I truly did just want to take Carol.

"Oh, okay. I'll wait here."

That'd been my plan. I was learning not to argue with Donna. Carol had to do her morning rituals and change clothes. Macho guys like me don't need to change clothes, especially if they're afraid that their drawers and closet contain nothing but their little sister's clothes. I'd get changed when Dana left.

I was very eager to get some salmon bagels, and there was something else I wanted to do... , what was it? Oh yeah, check to see whether I was a multi-millionaire or not.

A little explanation about the "salmon bagels" mention: We have a bakery - "Happy Foods" - fairly near where we live. It's run by a Korean family that came to Corvallis via several years in Australia, and they sell an unusual range of food. They make most of it themselves, and some of it can be a little expensive, but Mom likes going there because they have English styles of cakes (it's a pastiche of a patisserie, with particularly pleasing provender). I was eager to get the salmon bagels, as I like salmon very much. It's too expensive for the Andersons normally, but hopefully not today!

Thinking of the bakery, I offered, "Dana, do you want anything from Happy Foods? Croissants, bagels, or whatever?"

"No thanks. I'll go home for breakfast when your parents are up."

Outside I asked the security guards, "Guys, do you want anything from the bakery? I'm going to Happy Foods. Croissants, bagels, or whatever?"

"If you're going there, some of their hot meat pies would be great."

#1: <Who was the sissy that offered big, burly security guards croissants? It must be a cold job for them, no wonder they want hot pies.>

"How many do you want?"

"Would three or four be okay?"

"I'm guessing you mean three or four each, right? I somehow can't see big guys like you sharing three pies between you."

"Yeah, each. That's not too many?"

"I'm feeling appreciative for surviving the night, so eight hot meat pies it is."

#2: <I hope our account contains lots of zeroes, rather than just one of them.>

Walking to the car, I quietly told Carol, "Careful what you say in the car."

"Yeah. We've been careful for days." One of the indications of her carefulness was Carol not attaching herself to my arm as usual. That had to be hard on her, considering how much she must've been worried about and missing me.

In the car, I started driving toward the bank. I was initially reluctant to tell Carol where we were going, in case the baddies heard it on a bug and used the knowledge of where we were going to set up an ambush, but I realized I was being silly. Paranoia is a pain in the ass (because it sneaks up from behind when you're not looking).

I told Carol, "I want to go via the bank to check my account balance. I haven't had a chance to do that yet. I probably did have a chance when I was driving to town last night, but I didn't think about it then. Now I'm having trouble thinking of anything else, haha."

"It's good to have you back. You've had an amazing time."

"Yes and no. Watching Prof play was amazing. That lasted about ten minutes in total. The rest of the time was pretty boring." I'd given Carol a wink halfway through, to let her know that my comment about Prof's play was deliberately deceptive.

"Did you really spend a day fishing?"

"Yeah. I enjoyed it. It was very pleasant bobbing on the boat, reading a book, leaning back and relaxing. I caught a few fish too, although I let them go afterward. It was a very enjoyable day." For the first time I was hoping that my car was bugged.

^-- I added, "I feel sorry for you guys though. I almost hope the bad guys release Prof's real name, because I'd love to sue them for all the harassment and to make sure the public knew what sore losers they are." Making that the second time I wished my car was bugged.

Carol said, "I hope everything gets back to normal soon."

I knew EXACTLY what she meant! "Yeah, me too. Big time." I used NP to gently stroke her cheek. Not enough to show up on any camera, but enough for Carol to feel it. "Hopefully Monday. I'll hurry Prof up about that."

When we got to the bank, Carol got out of the car at the same time as I did. I was a little worried about her seeing what I was about to do, in case there was $0 in the account, but it would have been too important a secret to keep from her. I'd also taken note that Julia had kept Carol fully in the loop, which was obviously the right thing to do with a wife, even if it increased her worry at times - that logic obviously not applying to mothers.

With a rapidly increasing heartbeat, I inserted the card and pressed the necessary buttons. The screen cleared, paused for a couple of eternities, then displayed...

"Account balance... $8,000,000.00"

"Wow!" | "{Screech}." I think mine was the "Wow!", but I wouldn't swear to it.

I had no idea why the value was $8 million, rather than $11.1, $11.2 or half of either of those values if Prof had split the amount evenly across the two LA accounts. But neither did I care, $8 million was good enough for me!

Carol hugged me fiercely. "I'm SO proud of you!"

"I'm rather proud of myself too! I've actually got $8 million in an account of mine; that's amazing. Wow."

We stood there, trying to let it sink in. I said, "I feel too shaky; you'd better drive."

"Haha. Boy oh boy, it's huge. That's going to change our lives. Mom and Dad are going to be blown away. It's going to take a lot of pressure off them. Mom will be able to visit her parents whenever she wants, and all sorts of other things."

"Yeah, and Dad will be able to take time off work, so he can relax by tinkering with our lawnmower at home all day, haha. Let's get breakfast, my treat." I grabbed the ATM card, not wanting to leave that behind!

"Haha. I wish I could kiss you."

"Not as much as I wish I could kiss you. I want to celebrate, and the best I can do is buy you a piece of cake."

"We can't stand around here. Can you drive?"

"Sure, nerves aren't a problem."

We went to the VERY well named "Happy Foods", and behaved rather silly, buying anything and everything we liked the look of, plus eight hot meat pies.

We returned triumphant and giggling from our successful pillaging of the bakery. On the way inside I stopped to look through the many bags to find which one contained the meat pies, found it, and gave it to the guys. They were happy, although not NEARLY as happy as Carol and I were.

Mom and Dad were up, and were bemused by the quantity of food we'd bought, and by our silly giggles and obvious happiness.

Carol explained, "We're celebrating. This is 'Teenagers Go Wild' Anderson style: we bought one of every single type of everything they had in the place! Haha."

"And a LOT more of our favorites. Salmon bagel anyone? I got ALL of them, haha."

"We're going to need plates. A LOT of plates! Haha."

Soon Mom and Dad were laughing along too, Donna's mouth being full. I cleared my schoolwork off the table, and we laid out all the food, laughing at our silliness in buying so much of it.

Dana yielded to the wide array of temptation, and had some chocolate cake. I had as many salmon bagels as I could manage, with appropriate constraint because there were quite a few cakes I had my eyes on.

Dad asked me, "I take it that you think everything bad is over?"

"I think so. Probably we should check with Prof first, but from my point of view life seems pretty good about now."

"I might call him then, and if he's fine with it, end the security?"

"Go for it, Dad."

Dad called the Williamses, and it was fine with Prof. Then the women got hold of the phones, and started talking real estate. Mom's side of the conversation went as follows:

"Pardon? Did I just hear you correctly?"

"Okay, I'll be over in an hour. I'll bring a great deal of food with me. Mark and Carol went to the bakery and bought pretty much everything they had."

"No, seriously. There's enough food here to feed everyone in your family."

"Sure. See you soon."

Mom hung up then told us, "The Williamses are coming over. They were about to have breakfast anyway. Vanessa and Julia have been looking at real estate online, and they say there's a lot more choice in our price bracket than when we looked three weeks ago. I don't even know what our price bracket is. What is it, Mark?"

"Umm, I'm not sure myself. I could guess, but I could easily leave something out of my calculation. You'd better wait a few minutes to ask Vanessa when they arrive."

"Okay. Vanessa says there are three or four good looking properties listed. She wants to see them today. She's not just window-shopping this time, but talking about making an honest-to-God offer soon! This is really happening, isn't it?"

Carol giggled. "It certainly is. There are going to be some changes around here. Well, not around here. Around wherever it is we end up living, haha."

Dana said, "I'll head home now then. Is that all right?"

"That's great, thanks Dana," agreed Dad. "It sounds like we won't need you again. Thanks very much for doing such a good job." There was more of that sort of stuff, Dad paid her, and she left.

I said, "I'll have a quick shower. Or maybe a slow, thorough shower would be better, because it's been a while since I had one."

After my shower, I checked the drawers in my current room, and they had my clothes in them. I changed into some clean clothes and was back in the kitchen working on another pastry when two cars of Williamses arrived. They'd brought a couple of bottles of champagne and some glasses, and we all had a very happy celebratory drink. Small, in the teenagers' cases, but that was fine with me as I didn't like the stuff much anyway, although I SURE did like the reason for drinking it!

The Williamses descended on the food, and it was soon clear that salmon bagels were a firm favorite for most of their family too. We actually ran out of them, although not food in general.

When the Williamses had eaten enough, Vanessa announced, "We've been discussing the housing situation at home. Robert and Andrew like the idea of their staying in our existing house, and moving Ashley and Sophia in, no doubt to do the cooking and cleaning. They've already tossed a coin for who gets the master bedroom. Andrew won that, so Robert gets the best study. You can tell they can't wait to push their poor old parents out into the cold as quickly as possible."

Prof said, "We've been waiting for them to leave home for years, but now they're staying and we're leaving. They out-waited us, the cunning devils."

Vanessa said, "What The Boys are really doing is house-sitting while we see how having our two families in the same house works out. Their staying in our current house reduces the number of bedrooms we need in the new place down to a much more common number, giving us a great deal more choice."

#2: <Should they be talking like this with there possibly being bugs here?>

#3: <I'm sure they haven't forgotten about them, they've been living with the worry for days. Let's check with Prof though.>

Prof started talking, so I quietly asked Vanessa about the bug danger. She quietly told me back, "It doesn't matter for this conversation. Good that you're being cautious though."

Prof was saying, "Recent events have highlighted how important security can be. If we'd all been in one house, security and communication would have been much easier." That'd been one of Mom's major annoyances during my absence, Vanessa wouldn't let Mom get into phone conversations with her about what was happening. "For that reason alone, I'd like us to relocate quickly. Another reason for speed is that some of the younger members of our group may not be in Corvallis for much more than a year. Living insecurely for many months while we search for the perfect house doesn't make sense given that timeframe. Our budget is higher than we previously thought and we need three fewer bedrooms - for The Boys and their study - which gives us more choice and makes it easier for us to find a suitable place quickly."

Mom jumped in, "What is our budget? All I know is that your trip was financially successful."

Prof said, "I can't give you an exact figure yet, there's also quite a lot of flexibility in the budget, and there's also the issue of the detached building for the youngsters. Some of the online properties had various outbuildings already, which could substantially reduce that cost. With those provisions noted, we could probably make offers in the $2 to $2.5 million dollar range. We could even..."

Mom made a sort of strangled groaning sound.

Vanessa said, "Would you like some more champagne, Felicity? Haha." What Mom most wanted was to sit down.

While she was doing both, Prof resumed, "I was about to say that we could even go above $3 million, but it'd absorb nearly all of our financial flexibility, so I'd rather not. If a $3 million property was perfect for us we'd probably go for it, but that's unlikely because of our unusual requirements. It's also unlikely because there are far fewer properties listed in the three millions, rather than the twos, so chances are we'll buy something in the two million dollar range and make the necessary alterations."

"That's more than ten times what this house is worth!" said my stunned mother. "Are we really going to buy a two million dollar house soon?"

"Yes, Felicity. Vanessa thinks you two can find somewhere that's suitable for us relatively quickly, and we should close on it as soon as possible. One of our criteria is to find a property that we can renovate either very quickly before we move in, or while we're in residence. If we can find a place like that, we could be living in it a couple of months from now."

Vanessa said, "I've got printouts of four properties which are suitable for further investigation in my satchel, just from fifteen minutes of browsing this morning. Plus realtors will have properties on their books that we couldn't find in our quick search. When we went looking three weeks ago, we had half the budget and we wanted three more bedrooms. Now we've got a great deal of choice. I'd be surprised if we can't find something suitable quickly. I wouldn't go so far as to say 'time is of the essence', but Prof and I would like our home security to be much better than it is now. Let me show you the printouts in my satchel."

Mom thought that was an excellent idea.

While the mothers were doing that, Prof started joking with Dad about all the extra lawnmower maintenance the much larger property would cause him.

I heard a woman's voice raised in anger from outside, and looked out in sudden fear and my usual paranoia. I relaxed very quickly, as it was only Mrs. Roberts remonstrating with one of our security guards. She's our most nosey neighbor, and no relation to Mr. Ivan Roberts, the lucky winner of $11.1 million from Binion's.

Dad said, "She comes over at least once a day. I'll go deal with her again."

Which left Prof free for me to talk with, starting with, "Prof, I hope we can get the place checked for bugs soon. It's a REAL pain living this way!"

"I agree. I intend to work on that after breakfast. When I get home I'll contact my PI for his advice on phone models and the right firm to use for sweeping our places."

"Thanks. Maybe less important now, but when I was talking to Mom last night she had trouble accepting your financial success. I had a mental note to ask you to transfer my parents' share into their account on Monday. There's no reason why not, is there? Not for such a small amount."

"How about I transfer a chunk into your Corvallis account on Monday morning, and you write out checks for the other disbursements. Holding her check should please your mother. Do you remember the shares?"

"I'm not sure. Things have changed somewhat."

Prof worked out what I was referring to (his betting $850,000 rather than the $750,000 we'd planned on). He said, "That changes nothing." Prof leaned in to whisper in my ear, which mostly meant I lowered my ear so he could reach it, "The Boys 150 each, Julia and Carol 300 each, your parents 1 mil' in total." Prof stood back, asking, "Okay?"

"They're the before tax values. So they pay their own taxes, right?"

"Yes, it has to be done that way. I'll transfer more than enough into your account, because I want to circulate some, but please don't write checks for more than the values I just told you, okay?"

"That raises the next question I was going to ask you: I don't have a checkbook. If I go to the bank at lunchtime and ask them for a checkbook, they'll give me one won't they?"

"They'll fall all over themselves. They'll also offer you all sorts of other products and services. Don't sign up for anything except a checkbook. Don't even let them waste your time talking about anything else. Most bank products are poor value, so just tell them to mail the brochures to your home. It might be educational for you to read them, but at your leisure. When you're at the bank, I'll get you to do a wire transfer for me too please. I'll open another account Monday morning and get that bank to text the details to Julia's phone. If you do that wire on Monday, we'll be able to get a couple of circles done by Friday, which will be enough."

#3: <$11.1 million less the amounts Prof told us leaves $9.2 million. There's a $1 million gift to Prof and Vanessa, and the two $1 million emergency funds which need 1.5 pre-tax each, so $5.2 million left, so just under $3.5 million left for us after tax. That's nice, isn't it?>

#2: <VERY! I wonder if the nice government will send us a 'Thank you' note for the $3.7 million worth of checks we'll be sending them.>

#1: <That'd be the least they could do. Spending $3.5 million is going to be fun.>

#3: <Prof said 2 to 2.5 for the house, so that leaves 1 to 1.5 million for everything else. Let's hope our anniversary present to the girls doesn't cost more than a million, otherwise our new house isn't going to have much furniture.>

#2: <We should research that as soon as we can, because we'll probably need to book it several days in advance. We're going to need a credit card too.>

I asked Prof, "I want to use a credit card next weekend. How do I go about getting one of those?"

"Ask the bank for one on Monday. Make sure you tell them you need it by the end of the week. Just get a basic card for now. They'll probably give you a form that you'll have to get your parents to sign as guarantors for your debts. That means they guarantee to cover your debts if you can't pay them. Isn't that amusing?"

"Yeah."

Dad had returned from dealing with Mrs. Roberts and wanted to talk with Prof about something. I could hear Mom in the living room, getting excited as she was looking through Vanessa's printouts. I was more than a little interested in what $2 to $2.5 million worth of house looked like, so I went to check.

Julia passed me several pages stapled together, saying, "This is the one I like the best."

A couple of seconds later I said, "Wow, this is GORGEOUS! And expensive - $2.9 million! How can a house have 4 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms? That seems wrong, somehow. And what's half a bathroom anyway? Wow, look at this picture..." I carried on like that for a while, proving that Mom wasn't the only Anderson who could get excited over expensive real estate.

Donna showed me her favorite. After glancing at the first picture I saw why - there was a horse corralled beside the house. A cheap property at only $1.95 million, but it was still Donna's favorite.

I commented, "I was hoping to find a house that didn't have big, ugly animals living next door."

Donna just laughed, knowing better than to fall for that.

Vanessa said, "Most of the properties we're looking at will be large enough for a horse. We want a house with a great deal of privacy, which usually means several acres of land."

After I'd looked through all four bundles, I said, "All of these are wonderful houses. They blow me away. I've never even visited a house as good as any of these, let alone lived in one."

"So you'd be happy if we bought any of these?" asked Vanessa.

"Absolutely. They're gorgeous."

"It's a good thing the women are in charge of the decision then. I'd be surprised if at least half of them aren't totally unsuitable for us. We need two master bedrooms, for example. One of the four listings says it has two master suites, but then it praises only one of them without mentioning the other, which raises questions. The other houses might be able to be renovated to create a second master bedroom - that'd be quite easy if they already have two bedrooms beside each other, with a bathroom on either end - but we can't tell that from this information. Then there's the question of where the semi-detached dwelling goes. You can't just plop another small house beside the main house. We need to see the layout of the property for that."

"Tell you what, I think I'll delegate mansion-buying to the two mothers. How does that sound?"

"Very sensible of you. We'll try to live up to your high expectations. We'll be leaving shortly as I'm eager to move on this."

Mom and I both said, "Me too," at the same time.

When Mom and Vanessa were about to go, Julia asked me if she could go with them.

I didn't know what was going to happen today. I had planned to stay around the house so Mom could be reassured by my presence, but that plan came unstuck when Mom couldn't wait to abandon me to go mansion-shopping. Dad wasn't the type to need reassurance, so I was at a loose end.

I said, "I need to research our anniversary celebration, which starts with some online browsing, so I should go to your place. I guess I could do that and then maybe catch up on my schoolwork and maybe OSU studying? I should call my soccer coach a bit later too, to find out what's happening with this afternoon's game."

"Excellent. Thanks. Bye." Julia was gone. I'd meant my suggestion only as the start of a conversation about what was going to happening today, but apparently Julia knew what she wanted to happen.

Carol said, "Can I study with you, please Mark? I'd like to be around you for a while. It was scary you being away and we didn't know where you were."

"Sure you can, sweetie." It'd be nice to have someone near me, and it'd be nice to cheer Carol up, but it'd also be DAMNED hard to behave myself in the presence of the potential bugs. I wanted very much to pull Carol onto my lap and do totally unbrotherly things with her.

Carol said, "You should invite Ava around too. She's been missing you. Maybe we could have lunch together."

Oops. I'd forgotten about Ava. "That's a very good idea. You've got her number in your phone, haven't you? Because my phone is history and I never bothered trying to remember it when I programmed it in."