Chapter 72: Nine Days In August

July 29, 1995

Down on one knee to get the angle on the green, I squinted in the bright high desert sunlight. I lined up the eight-foot putt. Satisfied that I had the break figured out, I got up and crouched over the ball, took a couple of practice swings, and then struck the ball firmly with my putter. The ball rolled slightly uphill, and then broke sharply to the right ... straight into the cup. I let out a yell, and thrust my fist skyward.

"Another birdie for Mr. Too Hot to Touch," joked Vince, who was standing a short distance away. "You're now up by two strokes. Let's see if you can hold that lead though four more holes."

"I don't wanna hear it," grumbled Javier, the third player in our three-person group. He was hopelessly behind at this point.

Golf had become my latest passion. I'd advanced to the point where I could now compete with Vince, although I had yet to actually beat him scratch. The course was nearby – less than a mile from our place – and I'd found a couple of local golf buddies who I played with on a regular basis. I'd even managed, on one of our trips back east, to drag Dave and – wonder of wonders – Paul out onto the golf course.

Vince and Evie were in town for a visit, something they'd done on an annual basis ever since we'd moved to New Mexico. This time, they'd brought their two kids along with them, the youngest of whom was six months old. Inez, Evie, and Lupe were back at the house, taking care of four very young children. However, once our little golf interlude concluded, we men would be relieving our ladies in the babysitting role, while they went mall-hopping.

Two months ago, Evie had gotten her big professional break. She'd toiled for years at the radio station, waiting for her day to arrive. Over time, she'd moved from a nighttime DJ to working the afternoon shift. From there, she'd switched into the news department, only getting a small amount of air time each day. It was enough, however, for her to get discovered. She'd caught the ear of someone important at a Chicago TV station, and at long last, she now had the same on-air reporter job she'd had in the other timeline.

Fate was a powerful force, indeed.

"So, Pat," Vince said with a crooked grin as he stood over the fifteenth tee, "win this round, and maybe you can hang on to your white man card after all." I couldn't help but laugh at that remark. Vince and I often joked about racial stereotypes, and how many people would do a double-take upon learning that a white dude had gotten his ass kicked at golf by a black guy, and on several occasions to boot. I, of course, couldn't tell Vince that in just a few short years, the best golfer in the world would be a black man.

Vince remained unaware of my time-travel secrets, despite his wife's knowledge. In years past, Inez and I had worried quite a bit about the dilemma that might create for Evie. One day, I had a long chat with Evie on the phone regarding that very matter.

"If it's too awkward for you," I told her, "just say so, and we'll figure out a way to tell him."

"That won't be necessary," Evie assured me. "It's a little strange sometimes, but it's nothing I can't manage. I mean, I believe Vince could handle it if we did tell him, but at the same time, I think we're doing him a favor by keeping him in the dark. I'd really rather not saddle him with the dilemmas that we face."

I maintained my two-stroke advantage through holes number fifteen and sixteen. The par-four seventeenth, with a slight dogleg to the right about a hundred and fifty yards shy of the green, loomed next. Shooting first, I drove my tee shot firmly and dead center, where it settled just past the bend, near the left edge of the fairway, with a clear shot at the green.

"You couldn't have placed it any better," offered Vince. His own tee shot veered off a little to the right and settled just short of the bend, less than a foot from the rough. "Damn!" he muttered. "I just made it a lot harder on myself." Things were looking real good for me at that point.

Javier proceeded to hook his drive straight into the rough. He cursed, while at the same time laughing at himself. "I can't compete with you young turks," he muttered wryly. He recovered to put his second shot in the fairway, albeit quite a distance from the green.

Vince shot next, and, apparently feeling he had nothing to lose, decided to go for broke. Without a clear view of the flag, he nonetheless took aim at the far corner of the green. His well-struck but seemingly errant shot nearly landed in a bunker, striking a rock located on the edge. The ball caromed crazily onto the green, where it rolled ... and rolled ... and came to a stop, less than eighteen inches from the cup.

"You've gotta be shitting me," I uttered, more in awe than anything else.

"Sometimes, it's better to be lucky than good," said Vince smugly.

I put my second shot on the outer reaches of the green. We let Javier play on through, and he settled for a bogey five. I two-putted to make par, and Vince tapped in for his birdie. My lead was down to one stroke, heading into the final hole.

The eighteenth hole was another par-four, and Vince was on the green in two, his second shot coming to rest about forty feet from the hole. I aimed to match this feat, and pit my putter against his. Unfortunately, my second shot came up a little short, and landed with a plop in a bunker. Now, it was my turn to see if I could produce some magic of my own.

I pulled out my wedge, stepped up, and let fly. The ball emerged from a cloud of sand, landed firmly on the green, and eventually came to a stop. I was a ten-foot putt away from making par.

"Nice out," remarked Vince. He, however, was one long putt away from stealing victory from my grasp. He took his own sweet time, lined it up, and struck the ball. He struck it just a hair too gently, and that was all it took. The ball came to a stop about six inches short of the hole. Vince walked up and tapped in, then grinned at me.

"It's right there for you, hotshot. That putter of yours has been on fire all day. Let's see if you've got one more in you."

"Jinx!" I shot back, causing Javier to emit a hearty belly laugh. This particular ten-foot putt was no gimme. The ball would have to travel downhill with a bend to the right. I took a deep breath, and swung my putter through the ball. The ball picked up speed slightly as it began to curve to the right. For a second, it appeared that it wouldn't curve far enough. However, it encountered a minute pebble, or an irregularity in the surface, or something, and that was enough to provide the necessary re-direction. The ball landed squarely in the middle of the cup, and for the first time in my life, I'd beaten Vince over eighteen holes. Despite all of his friendly trash-talking, Vince was a gracious competitor, and offered me a handshake, as did my father-in-law.

Back at the clubhouse, drinks were on me. "What do you think the girls would say," Vince wondered hypothetically, "if the three of us came back to your place trashed?"

"Well, we'd get to pick which green to sleep on tonight," cracked Javier, as Vince and I joined him in laughter.

August 6, 1995

"Whew," gasped an exhausted and perspiring Inez. "That was quite a workout."

No, she wasn't speaking of that kind of a workout. My wife and I were in the midst of what had become a weekly ritual for us, weather permitting – the Sunday afternoon hike in the mountains. With Evie and Vince in town the previous weekend, we'd skipped last Sunday. But now they were back home in Illinois, and we'd gotten back into our routine. We'd just stepped out of a deeply wooded area featuring a long uphill climb. We'd found ourselves in a level clearing which actually contained a bench to sit on – this was a heavily-used trail – and we decided to take a breather.

As we took a seat, I reached into my pack and produced a couple of bottles of water, along with a pair of Ziploc bags which contained snacks. One held celery sticks, while the other one contained a mix of nuts and raisins. We attacked the celery first, and then Inez smiled and reached into her own pack. She pulled out one of those cellophane packages containing six peanut-butter-and-cheese sandwich crackers. I looked at her with raised eyebrows and an inquisitive smile.

"I forgot to tell you this," she said in response, "but I stepped on a scale this morning. Guess what? My weight is now exactly the same as it was when I was in college. A little treat every now and then won't hurt, right?"

I nodded in concurrence. "You're entitled to a little reward. I say, go for it."

After she'd given birth to Tina a year and a half ago, Inez had had difficulty shedding the extra pounds she'd put on during the pregnancy. Well aware of the weight issues she'd had in the other timeline, she set out to do something about it. These weekly hiking excursions had been part of her action plan. She'd also been spending a lot of time in our exercise room, which had been somewhat under-utilized up to that point. And she'd been making good use of our pool as well, swimming laps on a regular basis. Her mother had assumed much of the cooking duties for the household, and Lupe was skilled and resourceful enough in the kitchen to come up with a variety of highly palatable low-calorie offerings.

Inez's dedication had been contagious, and I'd picked up most of her habits. As a result, the pot belly I'd already owned at this age in my other life was nowhere in evidence.

I smiled over at my wife as she laid waste to the crackers. "Got any more of those?" I asked her.

Now, it was her turn to regard me with raised eyebrows.

"I've been good too, haven't I?" I said, making puppy dog eyes.

She teasingly appeared to consider my point very carefully, and then let me off the hook. She smiled brightly, and produced one more package of crackers. Her eyes grew serious for a moment, as she veered onto a touchy subject.

"Have you started writing again?" she wondered in a soft voice, her hand resting on my forearm.

My tight-lipped expression answered for me, in the negative. I loved everything about my life at present, but she'd touched on the one thing that stuck in my craw. My second novel had crashed and burned, selling sparsely, not even deemed important enough to garner a review. I was questioning my hoped-for future as a writer, and wondered if I'd faded into obscurity before I'd ever emerged from it.

"Perseverance, sweetie," she said gently. "Stick with it. You've got it in you. I know you do."

Soon, our little break was over, and we moved to get up and continue our hike. I stopped her, and quickly leaned in and stole a kiss.

"Hmm," she smiled. "Not that I'm complaining, but what was that for?"

"Just for being you. Plus, I didn't tell you 'Happy Anniversary' yet today."

Truth be told, today was not our wedding anniversary – neither of them. Rather, it lay in between the anniversary of our secret Justice of the Peace visit (which occurred on August 1) and that of our big church wedding (August 9). The first couple of years, we'd merely celebrated two different anniversaries, a public one and a private one. This practice evolved to the point where just between ourselves, we now considered the entire interim to be part of the anniversary as well. That's right – while for most people, a wedding anniversary lasted twenty-four hours, ours lasted nine days.

We shared another, deeper kiss. "It's, what, day six of our Nine Days in August?" I said with a chuckle.

"Nine Days in August," repeated my wife. "Sounds like the title of a book.

"The title of a book," I said slowly and thoughtfully. "You know, it could actually be the title of a book."

Inez just gave me a smile of acknowledgment, as she always did whenever she wished to afford me the chance to finish a thought.

"Can you imagine how crazy it would be to begin composing a novel with the title, without having any idea about the plot, the setting, and the characters?"

"I say ... go for it!" grinned my sweetie, repeating the very words I'd said to her earlier.

April 20, 1996

Saturdays were relaxation days for Inez's parents. At our insistence, they'd adopted Saturday as their day off. Besides their non-stop assistance in caring for our daughters, Lupe was in charge of the kitchen, and Javier had managed to wrest a lot of the outdoor yard work away from me, despite my protests. We greatly appreciated their help, and wanted them to have one day a week for themselves. Inez and I knew that we could certainly hold down the fort while they were out enjoying themselves.

We also encouraged them to get out and about, away from the house, to chase away any symptoms of cabin fever. They'd brought their two cars from Florida, and we'd had the garage expanded to fit four cars. On one of their first outings, they'd headed up I-25 and explored around Santa Fe, and they'd quickly developed a liking for the place. They'd adopted a couple of preferred local hangouts, and had made a few friends up that way. They'd encouraged us to join them on a number of occasions, and we'd taken them up on it a few times.

Now, Lupe was telling us about one of their new friends, one we'd never met but had heard a lot about. "Hilda's very worried about her job. The owners ran into some kind of trouble, and they're talking about closing up shop. Even aside from that, they've been neglecting the business for a while, and it's beginning to show. Or so she says."

"What type of business is it?" Inez wanted to know.

"She manages a good-sized store that specializes in photographic supplies and accessories ... picture frames and even cameras."

"Does she have an in-house photography studio?" I wondered, my curiosity piqued.

"She used to," explained Lupe, "but the owners didn't want to pay the photographers. Hilda wasn't happy with this decision of theirs. She thought – and still believes – that that portion of the business had the most potential for profit, if it was managed correctly."

"Hmm," I uttered, lost in thought. "Hmm." An idea was beginning to take shape in my mind.

April 27, 1996

Santa Fe, New Mexico

"Can I get you some coffee?" offered Hilda. Derek and I both nodded in assent. The three of us were seated in an enclosed area in the back of the store which was formerly the studio. Now, it functioned as a break room.

Hilda Rosales, in her early fifties, was a young-at-heart widow who could have passed for ten years younger. She had a slender figure and a rich copper-colored complexion. Born in the Mexican state of Sonora, she'd emigrated north of the border as a child. Her late husband, Edgardo, had suffered a fatal heart attack five years previously. Prior to Edgardo's untimely death, he'd been the store manager. Now, that responsibility had fallen upon Hilda, and even without Lupe's earlier disclosure, it would have been obvious to me that she was in the midst of trying times.

The thing was ... it was also apparent that Hilda was excellent management material. However, the owners had really tightened the screws on her, and after a short while, Hilda tentatively opened up to us.

"They're in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service," stated Hilda a little nervously. "I don't know the details, but just last week, we had a couple of serious-looking men in suits sniffing around in here. I don't ask any questions – I'm not the one who has to answer to the feds – but it's obvious the bosses are in over their heads with regard to taxes. We had a staff meeting the other day, and were told that they were either going to sell off the business or close it. And then, in the same breath, we heard that there appears to be no buyer willing to put up the kind of money they're looking for."

Derek, who'd arrived here from California earlier in the day, rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "They're probably hoping to make enough from the sale to pay their tax bill," he speculated. "They may or may not have additional tax issues if they sell the business, but I assume they know that." I nodded in full agreement. I looked a question at Derek, and he nodded right back at me.

"Can you get the owners on the phone?" Derek asked Hilda.

"Right now?" she said, a little startled.

"No time like the present," I smiled.

She started to punch out the numbers, and then hesitated. "Do you want privacy when you talk to them?" she asked, implicitly volunteering to make herself scarce if necessary.

"No," declared Derek. "If we end up going through with this, we want to retain you as manager. That's a given. Either way, this affects you."

"My in-laws think you're great," I assured her. "For me, that's enough of a recommendation."

A smile lit up Hilda's face as she finished dialing. My intuition told me we'd shown her a degree of respect she'd never gotten from the existing management.

Late that afternoon, after a swiftly organized face-to-face meeting with the owners, the basics of an agreement were in place. We still wanted to run it past our lawyer, and scheduled a meeting to sign on the dotted line for the following week. The sellers had come clean about their tax problems. They'd thrown a figure onto the table, and Derek and I agreed to meet it. We probably could have dickered down a little if we'd been so inclined, but it was apparent that the figure was in direct relation to what they owed the IRS, so we allowed them to save face. They were able to pay off the tax man, and our photography business now had a presence in New Mexico.

Now, the three of us – Derek, myself, and a beaming Hilda – were back in the studio. "So, it looks like this room will serve an actual purpose again," said Hilda. "How many photographers do you want to hire?"

"That's your call," said Derek right away. "You're the manager. Hey, if you want, you can even try to hire back the people you had before."

After a brief pause, I had something else to bring up. "Hilda, if we decided to open a studio or two down in Albuquerque, would you be interested in managing those as well?"

"Y-yes," she stammered, as she received her latest surprise. "Yes. You know, I think I'll really enjoy working for you guys."

May 12, 1996

It was Mother's Day, and rather than eat out in a crowded restaurant, we'd decided to honor the two mothers in our household with a dinner at home. And in truth, one of those mothers had taken it upon herself to serve up a veritable feast. Lupe had prepared a large ham with pineapple glaze along with a huge batch of restaurant-style mashed potatoes. For just this one meal, our diets would be on hold. She'd also cooked up a smaller batch of spaghetti and meatballs to suit our occasionally picky daughters. Six-year-old Lexie, who with her long brown hair was turning into a younger image of her mother, slurped away contentedly at a plate full of spaghetti. Meanwhile, two-year-old Tina sat in her high chair, picking away at a bowl of chopped-up pasta and meatballs, her bib stained bright orange.

"You know, Pat," Javier started, "Hilda is over the moon about the deal that you and Derek worked out. She was really in a bind, and it seemed like there was no way out. Now, she's in a far better situation than she was before."

"She told me," Lupe added, "that she had always wanted to open up a store here in Albuquerque, but those cheap owners would never go for it. She, of course, didn't have the money to consider doing it on her own. But now? She's in the situation she's always dreamed of."

My wife regarded me with a tender smile. "That's my husband," said Inez softly. "He seems to specialize in making people's dreams come true."

January 3, 1997

"I don't think I'll ever understand the younger generation," declared a visibly frustrated Raul Andrade.

The funny thing was... this time, Raul and I found ourselves in the same corner.

My wife and I had come back to New Jersey for New Year's, and were paying a visit to Raul and Rosie. The topic of discussion was, perhaps not surprisingly, the well-established relationship between my brother and Raul's youngest daughter. Seamus and Lisette had been co-inhabiting for almost five years now. Seamus, who'd declared that he wanted no part of criminal law the moment he announced his intention to become a lawyer, was now working as a patent attorney. Lisette, meanwhile, had forged quite a bit ahead of me in making a name for herself in the literary world. My third novel – which was indeed titled Nine Days in August – was in the works. However, Lisette's latest effort had sold like wildfire, and she was being touted as an up-and-coming author. Unlike me, she'd gone straight into the romance genre, but as she said, that's where the money is. She was currently working on a novel in Spanish, aiming to establish her reputation in that market as well. She and I talked quite a bit on the phone these days, comparing literary milestones and frustrations.

"It's strange, Raul," I said with a slight shake of my head. "I remember a time when I sat before you, trying to defend our decision to live together outside of marriage." I nodded at Inez, who merely smiled in return. "But now, this time around, I share your concerns. When do those two plan to make it official? I thought for sure my brother would pop the question over the holidays. Now, I'm asking myself if they'll make it to the altar before the millennium turns over."

"They certainly believe in taking things slow," giggled Rosie. She'd taken several English classes over the years, and her command of the language was now excellent.

"I don't want to bug Seamus about it," I added. "In his younger years, I'd have tried to knock some sense into him. But he's a grown man now, it's his life, and he has the right to live it the way he wants. Or, here's a thought. Maybe I'll propose for him, and ask Lisette to be my sister-in-law."

When the laughter died down, Inez gave voice to an opinion she'd often expressed to me privately. "Don't worry too much about them. They're fine. They've been soul mates since they were fifteen. A typical holiday proposal wouldn't impress Lisette, anyhow. She'd rather be proposed to in a hot air balloon in the middle of summer, or in front of a museum at two o'clock in the morning, or at home plate on opening day of baseball season." Once again, the four of us had a good laugh. Leave it to my wife to inject a healthy dose of perspective.

Rosie, however, pointed out the real issue as far as I was concerned. "I agree, they're very happy together. And you know what, Pat? I think that you compare Lisette to Inez in your mind, and you really don't want your brother to end up with anyone else. It's very cute."

I couldn't help but fess up. "On top of that, Lisette's a fellow author, which makes her a partner in crime. If that relationship runs out of steam for whatever reason, I think I'll be more upset about it than either of them."